Pappathi, Joseph win 400m hurdles titles

Pappathi won her maiden national medal in 400m hurdles, timing a shade over a minute, in the 52nd National Open Athletics Championship.
Pappathi, Joseph win 400m hurdles titles

The switch from long distance running to hurdles hardly makes for a seamless transition. Motherhood can make such a proposition all the more strenuous. But Police’s A Pappathi endured both to win her maiden national medal in 400m hurdles, timing a shade over a minute, in the 52nd National Open Athletics Championship at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Wednesday.

An out-and-out short-distance sprinter to start with, she quickly moved to 3000m, in which she was good enough to accomplish a handful of medals. Lately though, after child birth, she channelised her focus on 400m hurdles upon her coach Francis Sahayaraj’s directive. She vindicated his observation with a steady run to complete the race in 1:00.33s, eclipsing her previous best by two seconds.

Asian Games gold medalist Joseph Abraham won the men’s hurdles, beating his teammate Satendar Singh, the only other Indian to have registered a nsub-50 timing. The race was neck-and-neck before Satendar blundered on the 10th hurdle, which hampered his progress. Though tiring, Joseph crossed the line in 50.87s while Satendar, who has had the better of Abraham in recent outings, ended with 51.06.

Both looked expended of all energy and blamed it on the poor timing of the races. “First, we weren’t aware of the semifinals. Then it was delayed by an hour and it started at 11.30 in the morning. It was unbearably hot and we were quite tired. But surprisingly the final was held 15 minutes before the scheduled time. We weren’t even through with our warm-ups,” he complained.

National record holder in shot put Om Prakash, though, had no reasons to grouse as he fouled three of his six attempts to contend with a best of 17.81 and an unflattering third place.  More than once, he missed his footing and overbalanced his follow-through. An erring national champion paved way for ONGC’s Jasdeep Singh, who cornered gold with a best of 18.14m, followed by Railways’ Sathyandar Kumar.

Railways’ triple jumper MA Prajusha was the other jittery big name. Her best effort (12.86) could only bring her a bronze as Commonwealth Youth Games medalist Shradda Ghule dashed 13.17m to win gold. Likewise, national record holder VS Surekha couldn’t muster her best and eked out only silver, as S Khyati of Karnataka nosed ahead with a better jump, .5m better than Surekha. 

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