Press Trust of India
Kolkata, March 6: Services runners Mohammad Yunus and Bahadur Singh Dhoni finished first and second in the ninth Kolkata Marathon that was marred by technical glitches here Sunday.
An Athletics Federation of India (AFI) recognised event, it however was reduced to a farce as the organisers did not adhere to the basic rules of a marathon and now the timings stand the risk of not being ratified.
“Private organisers should always comply with the rules. We will only approve the timings after seeing the race director’s report. If the report does not tick all the boxes, then the results may not be counted official and will not be taken into account for a selection,” AFI secretary CK Valson informed later in the day.
There was no electronic time keeping, no dope control measures and even the finish line on Red Road was not equipped with video recording nor there was any water or other suitable refreshments for the runners, the few basic things for such an event, complained the AFI appointed race director Madhu Kant Pathak.
“They even forgot to give us water at the finish line,” Yunus said after winning with a timing of 2:30:37 seconds, 10 seconds ahead of his Army Sports Institute, Pune teammate Dhoni. Railways runner Arvind Yadav (2:32:13s) finished third.
It was however a memorable outing for the two former long distance runners, Yunus and Dhoni, who switched to marathon a few months back.
“The weather was hot today (Sunday) so I could not achieve a good time,” Yunus said. “To achieve the Olympic mark (two hours, 19 minutes), I will participate in few marathons in Europe,” he added.
India have already earned three quota places for Olympics in marathon among them being Yunus’ ASI colleague Nitendra Singh Rawat achieving the standard earlier.
The women’s half-marathon conducted simultaneously was won by Jyoti Chauhan with a time of 1:27:06s). She was followed by Anita Choudhury.
