India’s mixed 4x400m relay team registered a season best timing at the Athletics World Championships in the heats on Saturday in Doha to qualify for the final of the event.
The team also earned a quota for Tokyo Olympics as the finallists at World Championships get a automatic qualification for the Games. This is the second athletics quota for India as KT Irfan had qualified in 20 km walk earlier this year.
Despite the absence of star quarter-miler Hima Das and relay regular Arokia Rajiv, the team comprising of Muhammed Anas Yahiya, VK Vismaya, Jisna Mathew and Noah Nirmal Tom clocked 3:16.14 seconds in the second heat to finish third behind Poland and Brazil. In comparison, the Asiad gold-medal winning effort last year was 3:15.71 secs.
India’s time was the seventh best overall on the day with USA coasting to a world record time early on in the first heat with a timing of 3:12.42.
Earlier, sprinter Dutee Chand’s Athletics World Championships campaign ended in a jiffy as she was eliminated in the first round of women’s 100m, while 400m hurdler MP Jabir made an exit in the semi-finals.
Dutee clocked 11.48 seconds – one of her worst timings this season – in the women’s 100m preliminary stage to finish seventh in her heat and a disappointing 37th overall among 47 competitors.
The 23-year-old Dutee, who ran in the innermost lane, could not get close to her Personal Best (11.26) even as she had come to this championship with the hope of at least reaching the semifinals and it was not to be.
Dutee’s timing was in stark contrast with those of the likes of 2012 Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica and last edition silver medallist Marie-Josee Ta Lou of Ivory Coast, who led the heat timings with 10.80 and 10.85 seconds respectively.
This showed how much the Indians are lagging behind as compared to the best in the world.
Dutee’s heat was won by reigning Olympic champion Elaine Thompson (11.14 seconds) of Jamaica.
The timing of the last qualifier for the semifinals was 11.31 seconds and it was well within Dutee’s reach but she could not do it. The first three in each of the six heats and the next six fastest qualify for the semifinals.
On the same tracks in April during the Asian Championships, the 23-year-old Dutee had clocked 11.28 seconds during the heats and 11.26 seconds (national record) in the semi-finals.
But on Saturday, she came up with her third worst time of the season, after the 11.51 seconds in February and 11.61 seconds in March during the heats in the Federation Cup.
Dutee, the reigning World University Games champion, exited in the heats in the 2017 World Championships. She had clocked 12.07 seconds in the heats in London in the last edition.
Later, running in the outermost lane, Jabir finished fifth in men’s 400m hurdles semifinals heat No 3 and a creditable 16th overall among 24 runners with a time of 49.71 seconds. The top two finishers in each of the three semifinal heats and the next two fastest runners qualify for the finals.
Reigning world champion Karsten Warholm of Norway led the runners into the finals with a timing of 48.28 seconds.
Jabir had qualified for the semifinals with a timing of 49.62 seconds on Friday but he could not improve upon it on Saturday. He has a personal best of 49.13 which he had clocked this year.