The World Athletics quota places for the Tokyo Olympics should see three Indian athletes making the cut. Sprinter Dutee Chand will compete in the 100m and 200m events, Annu Rani will take part in the Women’s Javelin Throw while MP Jabir will give it a shot in the 400m hurdles.
World Athletics will officially announce the quota places on July 1 but the qualification period is now over and the Indian athletes should be on their way to Tokyo in all likelihood.
Recently, at the National Inter-State Athletics Championships in Patiala, Dutee Chand had shattered the national record in the women’s 100m event. She completed the race in 11.17 seconds. However, the Olympic Qualification time for the event was 11.15s. The previous record was 11.21 seconds, also created by Dutee.
The Odisha athlete was expected to qualify for Tokyo based on rankings as there were 22 spots available in 100m & 15 spots in 200m via the World Rankings route.
At the same event, national record holder in the Women’s Javelin Throw Annu Rani had failed in her final bid to breach the Olympics qualification mark as she could produce a best effort of 62.83m to win the gold. The Olympics automatic qualification mark was 64m.
Rani won a silver in the 2019 Asian Championships besides a bronze in the 2014 Asian Games. She had also qualified for the final of the event at the 2019 Athletics World Championships.
Besides these three, the 4x400m mixed relay squad, Avinash Sable (men’s 3000m Steeplechase), Tajinderpal Singh Toor (men’s Shot Put), Neeraj Chopra and Shivpal Singh (men’s Javelin Throw), M Sreeshankar (men’s Long Jump), Kamalpreet Kaur (women’s Discus Throw) and race walkers KT Irfan, Sandeep Kumar and Rahul Rohila (men) and Bhawna Jat and Priyanka Goswami (women) have already qualified for the Olympic Games.