Navpreet, Kavita excel on a mediocre day

By A. Vinod

NAGERCOIL, JUNE 2. It was on expected lines. And if at the end of the day there was nothing to shout about, it only provided a befitting commentary on the wide gap that exists between our top performers and the rest of the world, all given allowances included.

Admittedly, the National domestic circuit meet at the Anna Stadium here on Saturday was the first brush with competition for our athletes since the last year's Olympics in Sydney. But the show was a total disappointment as mediocrity remained the order of the day in the absence of any noteworthy performance, either on the track or in the field.

The only silver lining was the memorable wins carved out by two youngsters - Navpreet Singh of Punjab and Kavita Pandya of Railways - even as the seasoned K.M. Beenamol expectedly sprinted to the women's 200m gold and veteran Neelam Jaswant Singh managed to avenge her surprise loss at the last year's Open Nationals in Calcutta to the World junior champion, Seema Antil in the discus throw.

However, both Beenamol and Neelam were unable to match their previous bests in the events they figured in today. The same was the case with the other prominent winners of the day - Pramod Tiwari in the hammer throw, Hridayanand Singh in the discus and C. Thirugnanadurai in the 100m. In the absence of both Shakti Singh and Bahadur Singh, if it had looked to many that the path to victory in the men's shot put was finally clear for the fancied Jaiveer Singh, it was certainly a mistake.

For Navpreet simply had different ideas enroute to what was to be a glorious outing for himself, throwing the 16-pound iron ball to a career-best distance of 18.58m and that too in his final attempt well after Jaiveer looked to have sealed the gold with a 18.17m effort in his fourth throw.

Jaiveer was the early leader with efforts of 17.92m and 17.94 in his first two attempts before fouling his third trial. The 22- year-old Navpreet, in contrast, had only efforts of 17.60m and 17.80m in his earlier attempts before he uncorked the best put of the day, which also marked an improvement of his own earlier best by three centimetres.

Kavita Pandya, sixth in the 100m and third in the 200m at the last year's Federation Cup in Lucknow, too would not figured in anybody's probable list of winners in the women's 100m as the field had in it at least three athletes who had performed better in recent times than this Mumbai-based Railway athlete.

But having gained a good start, 21-year-old Pandya was to make the most of it leaving the established V. Pandeswari to fight it out with Tamil Nadu's K.N. Priya for the silver.

All the same, Pandya could only manage a rather poor timing of 11.83s even as she managed her first big win in the National circuit.

The other surprise was the fifth place finish by Vinita Tripathi who could clock a dismaying 13.04s.

Two other surprises also marked the day's competition as P.S. Primesh of Kerala won over K.M. Binu of Railways in the men's 800m and Fazal Ansari upset the applecart of B.S. Dubey in men's javelin. Beenamol won the 200m on a canter at 25.19s after leading the race right through, while, Neelam had a best of 55.13m - which came off her third attempt - as against the distance of 54.01m managed by her adversary, Seema Antil.

The athletes will now move over to Thiruvananthapuram, where the second circuit meet will be held on Monday.

The results:

Men: 100m: 1. C. Thirugnanadurai (Rlys) 10.84s, 2.Anand Menezes (Rlys) 10.94s, 3. Sandeep Sarkaria (Del) 10.96s; 200m: 1. Satvir Singh (SSCB) 21.92s, 2. Lijo David (Rlys) 22.46s, 3. Jata Shankar (Pol) 22.55s; 800m: 1.P.S. Primesh (Ker) 1:55.31, 2. K.M. Binu (Rlys) 1:56.30, 3. Jai Kumar (SSCB) 1:56.58; 1500m: 1. Joseph Baxla (Pol) 4:00.15, 2. Sundar (TN) 4:00.17, 3. Arun D'Souza (Rlys) 4:05.01; Long jump: 1. Satish Kumar (Del) 7.29m, 2. Ramachandran (TN) 7.13m, 3. Kannan (Indian Bank) 6.93m. Shot put: 1. Navpreet Singh (Pun) 18.58m, 2. Jaiveer Singh (Rlys) 18.17m, 3. Kuldeep Mann (Pol) 17.20m. Discus: 1. Hridayanand Singh (Pol) 52.18m, 2. Jaiveer Singh (Rlys) 50.38m, 3. Pramod Tiwari (UP) 45.19m; Javelin: 1. Fazal Ansari (SSCB) 72.21m, 2. B.S. Dubey (LIC) 71.06m, 3. Sunil Goswami (LIC) 70.51m. Hammer throw: 1. Pramod Tiwari (UP) 63.18m, 2. Vinod Kumar (UP) 60.81m, 3. Nirbhay Singh (Pun) 58.97m.

Women: 100m: 1. Kavita Pandya (Rlys) 11.83s, 2. V. Pandeswari (Rlys) 12.06s, 3. K.N. Priya (TN) 12.60s; 200m: 1. K.M. Beenamol (Rlys) 25.19s, 2. Jincy Philip (Pol) 25.49s, 3. V. Jayalakshmi (Indian Bank) 25.70s; 800m: 1. Madhuri A. Singh (Pun) 2:14.46, 2. Harjeet Kaur (Rlys) 2:14.56, 3. Sunita Dhaiya (Har) 2:14.67. Discus: 1. Neelam J. Singh (Rlys) 55.13m, 2. Seema Antil (Pol) 54.01m, 3. Sugan Yadav (Rlys) 51.80m.

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