Abraham, four 5000m runners qualify for Asian Championships

Chennai: National 400m record holder JosephAbraham of Kerala today became the first Indian athlete to qualify for next month`s Asian Championships at Guangzhou,

China when he won the gold with a new meet record in the 49th National Inter-State Athletics meet here. Also qualified for the Asian Championships were three women 5000m runners -- Kavita Raut (Maharashtra; 16:09.61s), Jhuma Khatun (Bengal; 17:07.84s) and Babar Lalita (Maharashtra; 17:29.72s) -- who finished in top three. They surpassed the qualifying mark of 18:21.32 seconds. Uttarakhand`s Surender Singh made it to Asian Championship, winning gold in 5,000m with a time of 13:51.31 secs (NMR), bettering the qualifying mark of 14:18.47 seconds. Abraham set a new meet mark, timing 49.91 seconds, bettering his own meet record of 50.22 seconds set on November 2006. However, he failed to better his national mark of 49.51 secs set in the World Championships in Osaka in August 2007. He forged ahead near the home stretch and picked up speed about 50 metres from the finish line to win the event. His statemate, Avin A Thomas (50.63s) and P Shankar (52.48s) of Andhra Pradesh bagged silver and bronze respectively. This was Abraham`s second golden effort in less than 15 days. He had won the gold at 50.26 seconds in the October 6-9 Bhopal National Open. An Indian Railways employee, Abraham also holds the unique feat of breaking his national record thrice in three months. Bureau Report