GANDHINAGAR, Dec 10: Athletes Bahadur Prasad and Rosa Kutty from Railways, held centrestage winning the 1500 metres run with great ease on the first day of the 37th Open National Athletic Championship which commenced at the West Zone SAI centre here today.

Maintaining a steady pace, Bahadur was unchallenged till the end while Satish Kumar of Services and Kulvant Rai of Police battled it out for the silver and bronze medals respectively.

Rosa Kutty was miles ahead of her rivals Damayanti of Police, who took the silver and Vasudha More of Railways, who secured bronze. In the women's high jump, it was a fight between Jaicy Thomas of Railways and P Srikala of FCI.

After clearing 1.5 metres, Sindhu Philip of Police gave up. Jaicy clinched the gold clearing the bar at 1.70mtrs in the third try while Srikala did it in 5 tries in the men's triple jump.

Another Railway athlete Sanjay Kumar claimed gold with a leap of 15.97mtrs. His team mate Jitendra Pandey secured a bronze clearing 15.53 mtrs while i.Rajesh of LIC took the bronze with 15.35 mtrs.

Susma of FCI emerged the new champion in women's Javelin with a throw of 50.94 mtrs, while Gurmeet of FCI secured a a throw of 47.64 mtrs and Vardha Venkatratna of Maharashtra made a throw of 45.38 mtrs.

In the men's shotput, the gold and silver was claimed by Shakti Singh and Avtar Singh of Railways.

Shakti hurled the iron bail to a distance of 18.04 metres and Avtar singh threw it at 17.90 mtrs. Mukesh Singh of Police won the bronze with a heave of 17.56 mtrs.

In the women's discus throw, host Gujarat secured a gold medal when Harjeet Kaur, earlier played Punjab, threw the discus to a distance of 53.12 mtrs. Neelam Singh and Sugaw Yadav both of Railways secured the silver and bronze respectively. The gruelling 10,000 mtrs for men was won by Gulabchand of Railways clocking 30.28.30 secs, taking the lead from the third lap. Harish Tiwari of LIC came second.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.