National Open Athletics | Dutee Chand betters her own 100m national record en route to title
Getty
Indian sprinter Dutee Chand bettered her own national record in the women’s 100m semifinals at the 59th National Open Athletics Championships in Ranchi on Friday, clocking 11.22 seconds. MP Jabir created the men’s 400m hurdles meet record in the final with a timing of 49.41 seconds.
India’s star sprinter Dutee Chand smashed her own national record in the women’s 100m semifinals on her way to the gold medal at the 59th National Open Athletics Championships in Ranchi on Friday, clocking in at 11.22 seconds. Dutee later clocked 11.25 seconds in the final to claim the gold, with Archana Suseendran and Himashree Roy taking silver and bronze respectively.
A fortnight after failing to reach 100m semis at the World Championships in Doha clocking a disappointing 11.48s to finish seventh in the heats, the 23-year-old surpassed her previous best timing and national record of 11.26s, set at the Asian Championships in April, which she held together with Orissa athlete Rachita Mistry. At 11.22s, Dutee is now the sole owner of the national record.
“A couple of days ago, I had the wrong belief that my body was tired at the end of the season. I recovered well to be able to break the last national mark twice this evening,” said Dutee to the PTI.
Her state-mate Amiya Kumar Malik, who has been struggling to find his rhythm the whole season, won the 100m gold at the National Open with a timing of 10.46 seconds, breaking the beam a hundredth of a second ahead of Malaysia’s Jonathan AnakNyepa. Gurindervir Singh (Punjab) clinched the bronze medal by a margin of 0.0044 seconds from his team-mate Harjit Singh in a photo-finish.
In other events, MP Jabir (AFI) rewrote the men’s 400m hurdles meet record, winning the final in 49.41 seconds improving on the mark of 49.67 seconds set by Ayyasamy Dharun (Tamil Nadu) last year. Dharun himself, running only his third hurdles race since recovering from a shin bone stress fracture, will be pleased that he clocked 49.50s for the second place, leaving T Santhosh Kumar (Services) in the third place.
Earlier, in a close finish, Haryana’s Rahul Rohilla won the men’s 20m race walking ahead of the more seasoned Ganapathi Krishnan (AFI) and Sandeep Kumar (Services).
There was some positive news for long jumper M Sreeshankar who leaped to 7.93m to lead the 12 qualifiers for the final after a disappointing World Championships where he finished 22nd out of 27 participants.
