Saraswati Saha emerges fastest

Saraswati Saha of Railways bagged a grand double, winning the women's 100 and 200 metres in the second National athletics circuit meet at the Sri Kanteerava stadium in Bangalore on Sunday.

Saha clocked 11.44 seconds in 100 metres and 23.68 seconds in 200 metres to emerge the star of the day. She shunted Delhi's Poonam Tomar (11.61 seconds) to the second spot in the 100 metres and avenged her defeat at the first meet at Delhi, where she finished second.

But her victory in the 200 metres was more significant as she finished ahead of Kerala's K M Beenamol, the only Indian to reach the semi-finals, in the 400 metres, at the Sydney Olympics. Beenamol came home at 24.07 seconds.

The Army's Anil Kumar again stamped his supremacy in the men's 100 metres with a timing of 10.46 seconds. However, a quadriceps-groin strain during the race forced him to pull out of the 200 metres.

Kumar, who equalled his own national 100 metres record, clocking 10.33 seconds at Delhi on May 1, developed cramps after 80 metres of the race but still managed to win. Karnataka's Clifford Joshua was a close second in 10.47 seconds.

The strain will keep Kumar out of action for 15 days. He said he would miss the third circuit meet at Chennai on May 7, and also most likely the Asian Grand Prix at Hyderabad on May 18.

Seasoned campaigner Neelam J Singh, as expected, won the women's discus throw with an effort of 61.93 metres, while Tamil Nadu's Anju B George took top honours in the women's long jump, touching 6.30 metres, much below 6.79 metres, the national record, which stands in her name.

In the men's javelin throw, Police's Jagadish Bishnoi cleared a distance of 75.75 metres to beat Sunil Goswami (74.66) and B S Dubey (73.88), both from LIC.

With Anil Kumar out of action, Joshua won the men's 200 metres easily, coming home in 21.02 seconds, while Railways's Anand Menezes (21.10) and Tamil Nadu's P Ramachandran (21.42) finished second and third respectively.

Tamil Nadu's Gojan Singh (8:37.32) and Kerala's P S Primesh (1:51.0) won the men's 3000 metres and 800 metres events respectively.