Race walkers Manish Singh Rawat and Khushbir Kaur qualified for the World Championships, by reaching the qualification standards in the IAAF Race Walking Challenge held in Taicang, China, on Saturday.
Interestingly, both the athletes were not selected for the Asian race walking championship earlier as they had not competed in the national championship.
Manish Rawat placed sixth in the men’s 20-kilometre race walk with a timing of 1 hour 23 minutes and 58 seconds. He beat the qualification mark of 1:24:00 by two seconds.
In the women’s event, Khushbir was fifth with a time of 1:34:01, as she comfortably came under the qualification mark of 1:36:00.
The head coach of the Indian walking team, Alexander Artsybashev was happy that the athletes were able to achieve qualification despite the hot conditions, and that Manish was the best among the Asians.
K. T. Irfan (1:20:59), Devender Singh (1:21:38) had come under the qualification criteria in the Asian race walking championship earlier in Nomi City, Japan, while Ganapathi Krishnan had clocked 1:24:18.
The World Athletics Championships will be held in London from August 4 to 13.
The results:
20 km race walk: Men: 1. Caio Oliveira de Sena Bonfi (Bra) 1:22:16; 2. Julio Cesar Salazar (Mex) 1:22:58; 3. Lebogang Abdullah Shange (RSA) 1:23:45; 6. Manish Singh Rawat 1:23:58. Women: 1. Lu Xiuzhi (Chn) 1:31:01; 2. Yang Jiayu (Chn) 1:31:04; 3. Wang Na (Chn) 1:31:09; 5. Khushbir Kaur 1:34:01.
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