Amlan Borgohain sets national mark, Sable cracks 5000m meet record on debut

Amlan Borgohain scorched the track to set a new men's 200m national record by clocking 20.52 seconds on a rain-hit final day of the 25th National Federation Cup Senior Athletics Championships on Wednesday. Avinash Sable, known for excelling in the steeplechase, rewrote the men's 5000m meet record with a fine effort over 13:39.43 that raised expectation that he could soon be claiming the national record standing in the name of Bahadur Prasad since 1992.

Kartik Kumar's bid for the distance double came unstuck in the face of Sable's run. The 23-year-old Borgohain sank Muhammed Anas Yahiya's existing mark of 20.63 seconds in a race that saw the top three finish inside 21 seconds. However, it was only Borgohain who matched the Asian Games qualifying standard set by the Athletics Federation of India. Having run successive sub-21-second races in September and March, he gave proof of his progress.

Running his maiden competitive race over the distance at the national level, Sable became the fourth fastest Indian in the 12-1/2-lap race. In fact, it was the fastest 5000m by an Indian on home soil. The top three finishers, including Uttar Pradesh's Abhishek Pal, met the Asian Games qualification criteria set by AFI. The triple jump saw a pulsating contest with Eldhose Paul of Kerala breaking a 10-year-old meet mark when he leapt 16.99m to claim gold. On a day when Praveen Chithravel (Tamil Nadu) and Karthik Unnikrishnan (Kerala) also secured qualification marks for the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, Eldhose Paul won by a comfortable margin.

Two 31-year-old hammer throwers, Sarita Romit Singh (Uttar Pradesh) and Manju Bala Singh (Rajasthan), produced a riveting contest. Having traded the national record over the last so many