M R Poovamma won gold in women's 400m race by improving her personal best with a splendid timing of 52.75 secs on the second day of Federation Cup Senior Athletics Championships but missed the World Championships qualifying mark by a whisker here today.
She defended her title which she had won last year at the same venue, but failed to book a berth for the World Championships, to be held in Moscow in August, by just 4/100th of a second.
Kerala girl Anu Mariam Jose, who pushed Poovamma all the way, could manage only 53.88 secs and settled with a silver while her state-mate Anju Thoams bagged the bronze in 55.14s.
Poovamma's previous best was 52.94 secs which she clocked during the Asian Grand Prix in Bangkok last year.
Mayookha Johny won gold in women's long jump with a modest leap of 6.16m.
Another athlete who successfully defended her title was Poovamma's ONGC teammate Kushbir Kaur in 20 km walk. National record-holder Kaur had a comfortable win on the familiar course with a time of 1:38:03 though she could not touch her national mark of 1:37:28.
The day witnessed three men failing to retain their gold from 2012, both on tracks. Kunhu Muhammed (400m) and Sajeesh Joseph (800m) finished second in their respective events after giving tough fight to the eventual winners Arokia Rajiv and Manjit Singh.
High jumper Jithin C Thomas of Kerala also lost the title to Tamil Nadu's Nikhil Chittarasu. Jithin could manage to clear only 2.13m today as against his 2.20m last year. Nikhil sailed over 2.19m this evening to take the gold.
Rajiv extended his winning-streak at NIS Patiala to three after his back-to-back victories over 400m distance in the Indian Grand Prix earlier this month and today equalled his personal best of 46.57s, which he set while winning the National Open Championships in Chennai last year.
As expected, Pune-based Army Sports Institute's Dileep Kumar, representing Maharashtra, won the decathlon event after garnering 6546 points.
