This has been a winning season for athlete Rajendra Bhandari. A few days after he broke his own national record in the Athens Olympics, the sportsman of the Royal Nepali Army's Tribhuban Club clinched a gold medal in the 5,000m race at the Asian Allstar Athletics Championship in Malaysia.

This was the first time Nepal has won the gold medal in the Asian level athletic event, with more than seven Asia-Pacific countries took part. Our Rajendra came first with a time of 14.16.36 minutes.

Bhandari had emerged as a promising athlete after he won two silvers in the 9th South Asian Federation games in Pakistan. Then, he broke his own national record by finishing the 5,000m in 14.04.89 minutes.

So why did he take more time in the Asian Allstar Athletics Championship than in the Olympics? Bhandari says he was confident that he would win after hearing that a champion from Qatar pulled out due to muscle injury. "When you aim for the medal, you consolidate your energy for the last minute dash," he explained. "Under that strategy, I was second till I was 200m from the finishing line and from then onwards I overtook the lead runner." (Sharad KC)