HYDERABAD: Alphonsa Rayen led a Tamil Nadu domination of the track events on the penultimate day of the 15th National Sports Festival for Women winning a double gold 800 meters and 400 meters besides helping her side establish a new meet record in the 4×100 relay here.

Clocking two minutes 12.8 seconds in the 800 meters event Alphonsa clipped a full second off the existing record of two min 13.8 seconds which was equaled by second-placed Suresh Bala.

The Tamil Nadu girl earlier picked up the 400 meters gold with a timing of 57.5 seconds. She was also part of the relay gold with a mew meet record timing of 47.6 seconds (previous best 48.3 sec).

D Sindhu took the long jump gold (5.64 meters) to complete Tamil Nadu’s domination of tack proceedings.

In other track events Vimla Singh of Uttar Pradesh B.B Syhla of Karnataka and Amar Deep Kaur of Punjab bagged the 100 meters hurdles 200 meters and shot put gold’s.

P.V. Lakshmi who earlier led the hosts to the team gold in shuttle badminton claimed a double in the open events. After team-mate Vijaya gave her a walk-over in the singles final for her to take the gold Lakshmi paired with the former to win the doubles with an easy 15-4 15-5 victory over Punjab’s Yogita and Sapna.

Sahiba Chadda of Chandigarh claimed the tennis singles gold with a 6-3 6-1 victory over Nikbila Natraj.

 

Article extracted from this publication >> February 15, 1991