Comedy of errors at Asian Athletics Championships

Bhubaneswar: The second day of the Asian Athletics Championships on Friday witnessed some dramatic incidents with the Indian men's 4x100m relay team being disqualified for a rule infringement while a 400m race was rerun because of an inadvertent fault of an official.

In a rare incident, Thursday's men's 400m semifinal race, which was won by India's Muhammad Anas, was run again Friday on the orders of the referee after protest by other countries.

In Thursday's race, the recall referee (who indicates a false start) inadvertently pressed his trigger but the race continued as there was no false start by any competing athlete.

Anas won the race easily but athletes of some participating countries protested, saying that the recall referee's action had disturbed them and impacted their performance, forcing the referee to order a rerun.

n the repeat race on Friday, national record holder Anas had to work harder than Thursday to finish six-hundredths of a second ahead of Iran's Ali Khadivar.

Unlike the first time around when he was in a commanding position heading into the home straight, Anas was behind the leaders today and had to pump himself up in the final 50 metres to win the race in 46.15 seconds.

Earlier, the Indian men's 4x100 relay team was disqualified for not completing the final baton exchange inside the permitted zone in the preliminary round heats.