Kerala's Joseph Abraham ran a career-best race and set a national record in men's 400 metres hurdles but failed to book a berth for the Doha Asian Games.
On the second day of the four-day 46th National Senior Athletics Championship, Joseph showed alacrity right from the start and was unbeatable after he took the turn for the home stretch to breast the tape in 50.22 seconds.
He beat second-placed Satinder Singh of Punjab (52.21 secs) by almost two seconds. Victor Jeba Singh (52.32 secs) of Tamil Nadu placed third.
The required qualifying timing for the Doha Games was 49.29 secs (the third place timing in Busan Games in 2002).
However, Joseph eclipsed P Shankar's earlier record of 50.39 seconds, established in May 2006 in Bangalore.
Joseph, a CRPF Inspector based in New Delhi and hailing from Kottayam had won the bronze medal at the Colombo SAF Games in August.
The two 100 metres races (men and women) turned out to be close affairs. Tamil Nadu's A Aravind, a favourite, lived up to his billing in the men's event. After a solid start, Aravind surged ahead in the first 30 metres, and with Uttar Pradesh's Vishal Saxena breathing down his neck maintained the tempo to win in 10.49 seconds.
Saxena clocked 10.59 secs to finish second while Vilas Nilagund of Karnataka, who clocked 10.67 secs, was third.
In the women's event, vetern Poonam Tomar of Delhi claimed the gold medal with a timing of 11.81 seconds followed by H M Jyothi of Karnataka, who was second in 11.97 secs, and
Deepthi Jose of Kerala (12.03 secs), who was third.
In the women's 400 metres, Pinki Pramanik stood out as the best with a superbly run race. She clocked 53.06 seconds while Manjit Kaur (Punjab, 53.70) and Chitra K.Soman (Jharkhand, 53.81) came second and third respectively.
Kerala's Aboobacker timed 47.21 seconds for the gold medal in the 400m run for men.
