India’s Akshdeep Singh secured the gold medal in the men’s 20km event at the Asian Race Walking Championships held in Nomi, Japan, with a timing of 1:20:57.
Singh, 23, last month secured his berth for the World Championships and 2024 Paris Olympic Games after setting a national record in the 20 km race-walk at the 10th National Open Race Walking championship held at Ranchi in Jharkhand.
This was a new national record, erasing Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Sandeep Kumar’s previous mark of 1.20.16s.
“It is the nature of records to fall. Today it is me and tomorrow it will be someone else. I will give thanks to God that this time it’s my name next to the record,” he said in an earlier interview to Sportstar.
India’s 20km race walkers Vikash Singh and Paramjeet Singh Bisht also qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics as well as 2023 World Championships after clinching the second and third place in the open category men’s section. Vikash and Paramjeet clocked 1:20:05sec and 1:20:08sec respectively, behind Qian Haifeng (1:19:09) of China.
The qualifying mark for both the 2024 Paris Olympics and 2023 World Athletics Championships in August in Budapest, Hungary is 1:20:10, which the two Indians breached by a small margin.
In the women’s 20km, race, Priyanka Goswami won bronze with a timing of 1:32:2, had previously qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics as well as 2023 World Athletics Championships by winning the National Championships last month.
Munita Ptajapati and Bhawna Jat missed the Olympics and World Championships qualifying mark of 1:29:20 by a big margin, clocking 1:33:22 and 1:36:20 respectively in the open category.
The third Indian woman in the open category, Sonal Sukhwal did not start the race.
(with inputs from PTI)
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