Top athletes fail to turn up for Grand Prix meet

Patiala, May 2 (UNI) In the absence of some of the country's ace men and women athletes like, Anju Bobby George, K M Binu, Bhupinder Singh, Navpreet Singh and others for unknown reasons, the inaugural Grand Prix athletic meet failed to sparkle here today at the NIS flood-lit synthetic track.

But for Mandeep Kaur(400m), who was outstanding in the meet, the other athletes performed below their best.

The meet was poorly organized with absolutely no co-ordination amongst the meet officials. Talking to UNI, Suresh Babu, chief coach of the national junior athletics, said that this meet is not so very significant since the athletes are just back from South Africa and are yet to get into the top gear.

In fact their focus is on the Federation Cup slated for May 10-13 in Kolkata.

The results of the meet are as follows: 100m(men): Sameer Mon -10.78, Ajay Kumar - 10.82, Lakhvir Singh - 11.25 400 m (men): Joseph Abraham - 47.20, Vinay Choudhary - 47.55, Virender Kumar Pankaj - 47.62 400 m(women): Mandeep Kaur -55.34, Manjeet Kaur - 53.65, Chitra Soman - 54.07 Javelin Throw(men): Om Narain - 70.04 m, Bikramjeet Singh - 66.62 m, Avtar Singh - 66.53 m Discus Throw(women): Krishna Poonia - 58.80 m, Seema Antil - 57.67 m, Harwant Kaur - 55.55 m Shot Put(men): Karanjeet Singh - 16.20 m, Om Prakash - 16.11 m, Gurpreet Singh - 16.02 m Long Jump(men): Shamsher Partap Singh - 7.54 m, Bhartender Singh - 7.54 m, Rajesh R - 7.49 m.

UNI