Peppin, Geetha best

Punjab emerged overall champions while its athlete Jasmin Kaur bettered the meet record in women's 20,000 km walk on a star-studded third and concluding day at the 43rd Senior National Inter-state athletics championships in Jamshedpur on Sunday.

The Punajb athletes picked seven gold medals, 11 silver and three bronze to finish with 161 points.

They secured the top spot in the men's section culling 85 points, while West Bengal finished first in the women's cateogry garnering 90 points.

Kerala gathered six gold medals, seven silver and five bronze to emerge the overall runners up totalling 125 points.

Long jump gold medallist Wyane Peppin of Tamil Nadu was adjudged the best athlete among the men while Andhra Pradesh's 400m gold winner S Geetha was declared the best woman athlete of the meet.

After a rain-marred recordless day of competitions yesterday, the proceedings at the JRD Tata Sports Complex livened up this morning when 26-year-old Jasmin finished the long walk in 1::45:28.36 to eclipse West Bengal lass Y Baladevi's mark of 1::47:18.4 set up in the last edition of the meet at Bangalore.

It may be mentioned that Bala Devi had completed the distance in 1::43:06.03 s in the Federation Cup at Hyderabad in July which was better than the existing national record of 1::47:11 seconds which Jasmin had set up at the Lucknow senior national open in 2000.

However, Bala Devi's feat awaits ratification by AAFI.

Jasmin, a Punjab Police ASI, faced little challenge and found herself unchallenged during the last 20 laps.

She later expressed happiness with her performance and said she hoped to do well in both the Asian Track and Field meet at Manila and the Afro-Asian Games.

Bala Devi won the silver clocking 1::50:21 seconds while Manipur's L Deepmala Devi (1::57:59.8 seonds) got the bronze.

The only meet record in the first two days of the competition was set by V S Surekha of Tamil Nadu on Friday.

The track and field events during the day also saw a number of top stars in action and almost all of them coasted to easy victories.

The women's heptathlon saw an upset result when G G Pramila of Karnataka picked the gold medal tallying 5787 points pushing favourite and national record holder Soma Biswas of West Bengal to the second spot (5427 points).

P Bindu (4771) of Karnataka earned the bronze. The field for the meet was, however, depleted by the last minute withdrawal of J J Shobha.

In men's 200m, Anil Kumar of Kerala bagged the gold covering the distance in 21.46 seconds, while the silver went to Madhya Pradesh's Sanjay Ghosh (21.54s).

Amit Saha of West Bengal won the bronze completing the race in 21.83s. Each of the three had their names in the medal-winners list for the 100m on the opening day when Ghosh clinched the gold.