Beenamol breaks Shiny's 400m mark

The strong Railways contingent expectedly claimed both the men's and women's team championship titles, as three meet records fell by the wayside on the concluding day of the 40th Open National Athletics Championships at the Salt Lake stadium in Calcutta on Wednesday.

K M Beenamol (women's 400 metres), the lone athlete to put up a decent show at the Sydney Olympics, Karamjeet Kaur (women's pole vault) and O P Dudi (men's javelin) stole the limelight with record-breaking performances as Railways scooped up six of the 13 gold medals on offer on the last day of the meet.

Railways, who had won both the men's and women's team titles in the last Open national at Bhopal, retained the honour by winning with 150 and 158 points respectively.

Beenamol of the Railways was the cynosure of all eyes at the meet. She did extremely well to set a new meet record in the women's 400 metres, with a timing of 52.25 seconds, to eclipse Shiny Wilson's record of 52.41 seconds, established in 1994.

Karamjeet Kaur of Police set a new record in the women's pole vault, managing to clear a height of 3.10 metres, thus becoming the first Indian woman to cross the 3 metre height. Karamjeet improved upon her own national record of 2.82 metres, established in the Inter-State meet in March at Lucknow.

Railwayman O P Dudi was the other record-breaker on the last day as he re-wrote the meet record in the men's javelin throw with an effort of 76.96 metres, eclipsing Jagdish Singh's record of 76.36 metres, set in 1998.