On the 2nd day of the 60th National Open Athletics Championships, Harmilan Kaur Bains of Punjab stole the show from the elite athletes by breaking Sunita Rani’s hard national record in the 1500 metres at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Hanamkonda on Thursday.
Sunita Rani’s Asian Games record of 4:06.03 set in Busan in 2002 was broken by the 23-year-old start-to-finish specialist. She also broke OP Jaisha’s meet record of 4:11.83 set in Delhi in 2006. Harmilan rushed away at the finish line to win by a wide distance, and Delhi’s KM Chanda maintained a close eye on him till the Punjab runner surged away at the finish line to win by a large margin.
Harmilan has gone unblemished in eight national-level 1500m races from January 2020, improving from 4:14.68 last year at the Khelo India University Games in Bhubaneswar to 4:08.70 and 4:08.27 in the Federation Cup (March 16) and Indian Grand Prix 4 (June 21) in Patiala, respectively. This is from an announcement from the Athletics Federation of India, which she completed with a national record on Thursday (AFI).
It took a lot of work to put a few good sprint races in the shade. Naresh Kumar (Andhra Pradesh) and Tarandeep Kaur (Delhi) were crowned the quickest male and female competitors in the event after dominating the 100m sprint.
Naresh Kumar’s fastest time of 10.30 seconds was the second-fastest by an Indian this year in the 100m, trailing only Gurindervir Singh’s 10.27 seconds in Patiala on June 26. It also positioned the Guntur resident among India’s top 5 fastest sprinters in the record. It seemed unavoidable that he would break Anil Kumar’s meet record of 10.37 seconds set in 2001.
Amlan Borgohain of Assam and Harjit Singh (Services) both set personal bests in the race, clocking 10.34 seconds each, with a photo finish separating them by six-thousandths of a second securing the silver medal for the latter. Despite a couple of bad starts by Services’ KS Pranav and Satnam Singh, the trio was able to write stunning runs.
Taranjeet Kaur, a Delhi teen who was struck by a car and broke her collarbone a little over two years ago, claimed the meet’s quickest woman title with a blazing run in a personal best possible time of 11.50 seconds, beating out the more experienced Archana Suseendran (Tamil Nadu). On January 25, Taranjeet Kaur won the Federation Cup Junior (U20) title in Bhopal, shaving two-tenths of a second off her previous best of 11.70. According to The Quint.
