Athletics: Special Events Two competition-Records tumble |17 February 2006

Five of the records came in the sprint events, but Anna Barra saved the day for distance runners, clocking a new record time of 5 minutes 34.2 seconds in the mile.

The old senior record of 5:39.1 set on February 21, 1998 belonged to Nathalie Didon.
“I did not expect to get the mile record. But with the intensity of training, my coach (Mikola Avilov) told me the week before that I could break a Seychelles record any time. I’m happy about it,” Barra, 23, told Sports Nation.

It was important for Mervin Loizeau to clock good times after losing the first 60m dash of the season to Danny D’Souza. He not only ran fast but sprinted to the finish line in record times in both the 60m and 150m races.

Loizeau sliced one hundredth of a second off Nelson Lucas’ old junior best time of 6.7 seconds as he stopped the clock at 6.6 seconds in the shorter race. The 18-year-old then bettered his own 150m junior best of 16.4 seconds with a new time of 16.3 seconds.

“The early season defeat to D’Souza kind of got me to realise that I need to be more serious. I came all out for a win and to avenge the defeat, but D’Souza was not present. I still think that if he was present, the 60m race would have been much faster. The 150m heat with Evans (Marie) and Christopher (Laurencine) was equally interesting and fast.

It’s a nice feeling to break two sprint records on the same day,” Loizeau told Sports Nation.

Evans Marie ran a perfect race in the same 150m heat to clock 15.8 seconds and make Tony Gabriel’s senior record of 15.9 seconds history.

Former sprinter Gabriel’s record had stood for almost eight years.

“I will be competing in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia, next month and my target is to improve the national 200m record of 21.62 seconds belonging to Cyril Brioche. I came so close to equaling his performance with a time of 21.65 during last year’s World Championship in Finland. The new 150m record should serve as an impetus for me to continue training hard to get the result desired,” said Marie who will celebrate his 23rd birthday on March 3.

Running alongside Loizeau and Marie, Belonie Secondary School athlete Christopher Laurencine followed his more-experienced opponents home with a clocking of 16.4 seconds for a youth record. Ironically, the old previous record time of 16.6 belonged to Loizeau and he set it on February 28, 2004.

Young promising sprinter Alice Khan, who took the top honours in the first 60m race of the year in a time of 7.9 seconds, again did well in the same event to re-write the records books in the youth category. She stopped the clock at 7.7 seconds.

Khan has now erased Samantha Akatsa’s name and record of 7.8 seconds from the record books.

G. G.