The national records are not a serious talking point in the provincial athletic meets in India. It is perhaps due to the non-availability of technical delegates from the athletic federation of india and lack of infrastructure which deter the performance level at such meets.
However, the 54th West Bengal State Athletic Meet proved to be an exceptional one when the 18 year old Eastern Railway employee Harishankar Roy bettered the national high jump record by clearing a height of 2.20m at the Salt Lake stadium here yesterday (6 June).
The national high jump champion of 2003 and a medal hope for the nation in the forthcoming Asian junior meet had a previous best of 2.12m for his pet event. He first set the mark in 2002 while finished second at the inter-state meet at Bangalore and does it once more for the gold medal at the same venue. After a poor sixth place performance with 2.05m during the inaugural Afro-Asian Games at Hyderabad last year, Harishankar underwent a rigorous training stint under Kuntal Roy, the jumps coach of Sports Authority of India based at this east indian metro.
He first cleared the height of 2.07, which equalled his own meet mark set last year, before went past his personal best 2.12 and then 2.17--the national mark held by Chanderpal Rathi since 1993. Harishankar then asked the officials to raise the bar to 2.20m which he sailed over on his second attempt. He however could not succeed in the next height of 2.24m.
This being an Olympic year, many athletes come out with good marks and I have an ambition to reach 2.25m as fast as I can, Harishankar told the media.
Another youngster Sushmita Singharoy cleared 1.67m for a new meet mark in the women's division before winning the heptathlon in 5.211 points.
Other meet marks were came from Soma Biswas (14.0 seconds in 100m hurdles) and Mukti Saha (23.5 seconds in 200m) for women.
