Nirmala Sheoran had a forgettable outing in the women’s 400m semifinals as she finished in the bottom three at the World Athletics Championships on Monday night.
The 22-year-old clocked 53.07 seconds, well below her season as well as personal best of 51.28, as she finished seventh in semifinals Heat number two and 22nd out of 24 competitors at the Olympic Stadium in London.
The Haryana runner, who ran at lane number 3, had an outside chance to reach the finals after she narrowly made it to the semifinal. In the Heats on Sunday, Nirmala had finished fourth to qualify for the semifinals. She had taken the last spot among the six best finishers outside the automatic qualifiers.
However, she seemed out of sorts as soon as she came off the blocks. In fact, she could not come close to her performance in the Heats from a day before either, when she clocked 52.01 seconds – the same timing that saw her win at the Asian Championships in Bhubaneswar last month.
“It was not a good race today. Yesterday, I had a good race. I could not recover properly after yesterday’s race. I have problems with the food here and I don’t have a personal coach,” she told PTI after her race.
“My target here was to do better than my personal best. But I could not do that without a personal coach. For an athlete in such a big event, a personal coach is very important. It is difficult without a personal coach,” she added.
The top two from each of the three semifinal heats and two fastest finishers from the remaining runners qualify for the final. Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser led the field going in the final with a 50.08 seconds effort while defending champion and Rio Olympics silver medallist Allyson Felix clocked the second fastest with a timing of 50.12.