In a bizarre incident, six runners finished the men’s 5000m final almost together with the winner ahead of the sixth-place finisher by just 0.25 seconds on the third day of the National Open Athletics Championships here on Friday.
Murli Gavit of Gujarat won the race with a time of 14 minutes 8.49 seconds while Services runners Gaurav Mathur (14:08.54s) and Sachelal Patel (14:08.56s) were second and third respectively.
Pradeep (14:08.62s) of Rajasthan, Lovepreet Singh (14:08.69s) of Punjab and Shadab Pathan (14:08.74s) of Maharashtra finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.
The six runners converged together towards the last stretch of the race and nobody was willing to pull ahead of the pack. The six runners crossed the finish line in almost two rows with three in each row.
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An Athletics Federation of India (AFI) official admitted that it was a strange finish.
Asked if there could be a case of the runners not wanting to finish on the podium and undergo dope testing, the official said, “It’s difficult to say that. In any case, they finished the race, they did not pull out midway.”
In top events, most of the dope samples are collected from among the the top-three finishers though they could be targeted for random sample collections also.
Meanwhile, Railways team won four gold medals in the women’s section on the day.
International distance runner Anikta of Railways was a comfortable winner in the women’s 5,000m race. It was 1-2 for Railways in the women’s pole vault.
Discus thrower Nidhi picked up the third gold for Railways team. The quartet of Florence Barla, Prachi, Sonia Baishya and Kiran Pahal clocked 3:37.82 seconds to win the women’s 4x00m relay gold for the Railways.
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Asian Games bronze medallist women’s 400m hurdler, Vithya Ramraj had a smooth sailing into the final.
Haryana’s Jyothi was leading day-one of heptathlon having collected 3114 points, while Sonu Kumari of Railways was at the second spot with 2919 points.
International javelin thrower Manu DP of Services was the only athlete to have crossed 80m in the preliminary round. His best throw was 80.97m.
Punjab’s promising javelin thrower Kunwer Singh Rana is also among the 12 who made it to the final.
Results:
Men: Long jump: David P (Tamil Nadu) 7.78m, Aditya Singh (Madhya Pradesh) 7.73m, Arya S (Karnataka) 7.65m.
High jump: Bharathi Viswanathan (Services) 2:18m, Gurjeet Singh (PSCB) 2:15m, Kaustubha Jaiswal (ONGC) 2:10m.
Hammer throw: Taranveer Bains (Services) 66.41m, Niraj Kumar (Services) 66.39m, Ajay Kumar (Haryana) 65.63m.
Shot put: Sahib Singh (ONGC) 18.96m, Parth Lakra (Delhi) 18.18m, Abhilash Saxena (Railways) 17.95m.
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4x400m relay: Services (Akshya Nain, Himanshu, Jidhin George and Angrej Singh) 3:08.08 seconds, Tamil Nadu 3:09.09, Rajasthan 3:09.85 secs.
Women: 5,000m: Ankita (Railways) 16:10.05 secs, Seema (Himachal Pradesh) 16:12.25, Drashtiben Chaudhri (Gujarat) 16:15.35 secs.
Pole vault: Pavithra Venkatesh (Railways) 4:05m, Baranica Elangovan (Railways) 4.00m, Mariya Jaison (Kerala) 3.80m.
Discus throw: Nidhi (Railways) 52.86m, Neetika Verma (Uttar Pradesh) 51.21m, Sandeep Kumari (Railways) 50.10m.
Triple jump: Mallala Anusha (Andhra Pradesh) 13.40m, Bhairabi Roy (Railways) 13.27m, Sharvari Parulekar (Maharashtra) 13.09m.
4x400m relay: Railway (Florence Barla, Prachi, Sonia Baishya and Kiran Pahal) 3:37.82 secs, Punjab 3:39.43 secs, Haryana 3:46.50 secs.
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