Anjali Devi became the first Indian athlete to qualify for the World Championships in the women’s 400m afte she clocked 51.53 seconds at the 59th Inter-State Athletics Championships. She improved her personal best from the previous 51.79 seconds which she clocked at the Open Nationals in Bhubaneswar last year.
But her absence from national camp and inconsistency in performance has forced the Athletics Federation of India to conduct a confirmatory trials before she is selected for the World Championships.
“Anjali will have to attend a confirmatory trial before the World Championships,” AFI’s planning commossion chairman Lalit Bhanot was quoted as saying by Indian Express.
Bhanot added: “AFI has a policy of making athletes, who are not part of the national camp or have stayed away for whatever reason, attend these trials once they qualify for an international competition.”
This is not the first time AFI is conducting confirmatory trials before a big competition. AFI did it before the Asian Games and Asian Championships 2019.
“We had conducted similar confirmatory trials for athletes like Sandeep Kumari [discus throw] and Monica Chaudhary [1,500 metres] as they were not part of the national camp but had qualified,” Bhanot said. “AFI has been asking Anjali to join the national camp for the past few months but she has given different reasons for not doing so. So we will have to see her performance at the confirmatory trials. Only after that will we decide on her selection for the World Championships.”
It is not surprising that AFI is subjecting Devi to a trial. Since winning her gold medal in Bhubaneswar, she was included in the national camp and considered to be a big hope. But her timing began to dip in the camp in Turkey.
According to the report, Devi was sent back to the national camp in Patiala but she left the camp. She gave various reasons for her absence and remained absent for five months.
