Inderjeet sinks Bahadur’s 12-year meet mark

KOLKATA: Inderjeet Singh didn’t break sweat to win gold in shot put but still bettered Bahadur Singh’s 12-year meet record of 19.59 metres with an effort of 19.82 m at the National Open Athletics Championship.

For someone who regularly crosses the 20m mark, Inderjeet wasn’t at his best but with a string of throws over 19m still made the final look like child’s play. Om Prakash Singh finished second with a best of 17.96m.

Lalita Babar and Neeraj Chopra also created meet records in 3000m steeplechase (9.39.83 seconds) and javelin (77.67m) respectively. Babar erased Sudha Singh’s time of 10:08.50 set last year. Sudha finished second at the SAI Complex on Thursday. The previous best in javelin was 77.39 by Harminder Singh, set 13 years ago.

Arokya Rajeev also equalled Paramjit Singh’s 17-year-old meet record effort of 45.70 seconds in the men’s 400m. Running in adjacent lanes, Dutee Chand quelled Railways mate Srabani Nanda’s challenge to emerge fastest woman but couldn’t get to her target of 11.60 seconds. Chand won gold in 11.68 seconds. Manikandan Raj (Railways) was the meet’s fastest man in 10.70.

India chief coach Bahadur Singh said solving Inderjeet’s long-standing issue of going abroad for a training stint ‘is just a matter of time.’ “He can go anywhere for training. But it needs to be seen if the coach has produced any athlete of that calibre,” said Bahadur, about the shot-putter’s planned stint in Pennsylvania. AFI UNAWARE Athletic Federation of India vicepresident Prasun Mukherjee said he didn’t think Nikolai Snesarev, India’s middle and long distance runners’ coach, would quit as stated in a PTI report.