Ram. Murali Krishnan for the IAAF
2 June 2001 - Nagercoil, India - The
first national meet of the Indian athletic season for 2001 took place as usual in Anna
Stadium, Nagercoil on 2 June. The southern Tamil Nadu town has assured a permanent place
for itself on the Indian athletics map ever since it hosted the National Junior
Championship for the first time in 1993.
Mr C. Neelasivalingaswamy, Secretary of Tamil Nadu Amateur Athletic Association, who hails from this small town was able to organise the National Junior Meet for a second time at the same venue in 1996 besides hosting a number of National Circuit Athletic Meets with the able guidance of the Association’s President Mr Walter I. Davaram.
The hero of this year’s National Circuit Athletic Meet, was the young shot putter Navpreet Singh. 22-year old Navpreet, the All India Inter-University Champion last year, hails from the wheat-rich Punjab State. Jaiveer Singh of Railways was a clear favourite in the absence of Shakti Singh and Bahadur Singh Sagoo. However, Navpreet managed to throw a Personal Best 18.58m on his third try. Jaiveer finished second with 18.17m.
On the distaff side Neelam J Singh avenged her defeat by World Junior Champion Seema Antil by hurling the disc to 55.13m. Seema could manage only 54.01m
One of the notable track races were the closely contested Women’s 800m in which veteran Madhuri A. Singh posted 2:14.46 for victory.
C. Thirugnanadurai and Kavita Pandya were the fastest male and female athletes of the meet with modest timings of 10.84s and 11.83s respectively. We would have better timings if there had been a synthetic track or at least a cinder one, most of the athletes opined. Nagercoil the host of national meet for the past eight years has only a ‘mud’ track!
Results:
Men:
100m: 1. C. Thirugnanadurai 10.84, 2. Anand Menezes 10.94, 3. Sandeep Sarkaria 10.96;
200m: 1. Satvir Singh 21.92, 2. Lijo David Thottan 22.46, 3. Jata Shankar 22.55;
800m: 1. P.S. Primesh 1:55.31, 2. K.M. Binu 1:56.30, 3. Jai Kumar 1:56.58;
1500m: 1. Joseph Baxla 4:00.15, 2. S. Sundar 4:00.17, 3. Arun D’Souza 4:05.01;
LJ: 1. Satish Kumar 7.29, 2. Ramachandran 7.13, 3. Kannan 6.93;
SP: 1. Navpreet Singh 18.58, 2. Jaiveer Singh 18.17, 3. Kuldeep Singh Mann 17.20;
DT: 1. Hridayanand Singh 52.18, 2. Jaiveer Singh 50.38, 3. Pramod Tiwari 45.19;
HT: 1. Pramod Tiwari 63.18, 2. Vinod Kumar 60.81, 3. Nirbhay Singh 58.97;
JT: 1. Md. Fazal Ansari 72.21, 2. B.S. Dubey 71.06, 3. Sunil Goswami 70.51;
Women:
100m: 1. Kavita Pandya 11.83, 2. V. Pandeswari 12.06, 3. K.N. Priya 12.60;
200m: 1. K.M. Beenamol 25.19, 2. Jincy Philip 25.49, 3. V. Jayalakshmi 25.70;
800m: 1. Madhuri A. Singh 2:14.46, 2. Harjeet Kaur 2:14.56, 3. Sunita Dahiya 2:14.67;
DT: 1. Neelam J. Singh 55.13, 2. Seema Antil 54.01, 3. Sugan Yadav 51.80.
