Two new marks on day one of Singapore Open
Two championship records were broken on the first day of the Singapore Open Track and Field Championships at the National Stadium yesterday.
Indra Abdul Kadir of Indonesia put on a display of determination to win the men's 20,000m race walk in a championship record time of 1hr 50min 55sec, breaking Myanmar's Thi Ha Myo Min's mark of 1:51.31 set in 2014.
In the women's 400m hurdles, Vietnamese Thi Huyen Nguyen smashed a longstanding tournament record with a winning time of 56.66sec.
The 24-year-old shaved half a second off Thailand's Rewadee Wattanasin's 1998 mark.
Two-time South-east Asian (SEA) Games gold medallist Nauraj Singh Randhawa of Malaysia surpassed his own national record in the men's high jump and equalled the meet's 27-year-old record at the same time.
Sending out a strong statement of intent ahead of August's Games, the 1.93m-tall athlete cleared 2.30m, one centimetre higher than his previous mark which was also set at this tournament last year.
With Nauraj's strong performance, much is expected of fellow SEA Games gold medallists Shanti Pereira of Singapore and Jirapong Meenapra of Thailand, both of whom will compete in the women's and men's 200m respectively in the final day of competition today.
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