Mezbahuddin Ahmed and Shirin Akter of Bangladesh Navy were crowned country’s fastest man and woman once again when they won their respective 100-metre sprint in the 39th National Athletics in Dhaka on Friday. Mezbah now took the honour to four consecutive meetings starting from Bangladesh Games in 2013. Mezbah clocked 10:60 seconds to beat his team-mate Kazi Imran who finished the race in 10.70 seconds to take the silver. Mehedi Hasan of Bangladesh Army won the bronze.
In the women’s 100m sprint, Shirin took 12:24 seconds and beat team-mate Zakia Sultana Subarna to win the gold medal in three successive meet, including last year’s national meet and summer meet.
Shirin also won the 200-metre sprint on the opening day, making it a sprint double for her.
Silver medalist Zakia clocked 12.30 seconds and veteran sprinter of Bangladesh Army Shamsunnahar Chumki took 12.37 seconds for bronze medal.
Mezbah, the best sprinter Bangladesh has currently, however, failed to eclipse his previous national record of 10.43 seconds that he set in the last National Summer Athletics.
The Bangladesh Athletics Federation failed to set up an electronic timer, leaving athletes’ timing dubious.
‘It would have been better if my timing could be measured through electronic timer,’ said Mezbah after the meet on Friday.
‘But this performance will also help me to do better in the upcoming South Asian Games.’
Mezbah claimed that he is a keen follower of the world’s supreme sprinter Usain Bolt and added that the Jamaican motivated him to get success at national level.
‘Bolt [Usain] is my role model and I always follow him in and out of the track and that’s the main reason behind my success,’ said Mezbah, who wished to bring a gold medal for the country in the next SA Games.
Bimal Chandra Tarafder was the last Bangladeshi sprinter to win gold medal in the 1993 South Asian Federation Games in Dhaka.
‘We didn’t win a gold medal in the 100-metre sprint since 1993, so my next target is to bring a gold medal for the nation in the South Asian Games.’
Meanwhile, fastest woman Shirin also failed to improve her best timing of 11.60 seconds that she clocked in the last National Athletics Championship.
Shirin said her main goal is now setting new national record breaking Nazmunnahar Beauty’s 11.60 seconds.
Beauty set the record in 2006 national meet, which remained untouched for nearly a decade.
‘Now my target is to break the national record of Beauty Apu,’ said the former BKSP student.
‘I got only one month to prepare for the meet and I’m happy to achieve the success after such a short-period of preparation.’
-With New Age input
