Vismaya, Poovamma to run in Poland; Dharun Ayyasamy recovers from injury

Quartermilers V.K. Vismaya and M.R. Poovamma, will be in action at the Goleniow Athletics Park international meet in Poland.

M.R. Poovamma (second from right) and V.K. Vismaya (extreme right) celebrate after winning gold in the women's 4x400m relay event at Asian Games 2018.

For more than a month, there has been very little news coming in from the Indian quartermilers’ training base in Spala, Poland.

But on Tuesday evening, their coach Galina Bukharina revealed that two women, V.K. Vismaya and M.R. Poovamma, will be in action at the Goleniow Athletics Park international meet in Poland on Wednesday.

Goleniow is some 550km from the team’s training base in Spala and the one-day meet will be the first event for the Indians after last month’s World Relays in Yokohama, Japan.

According to the 400m startlist sent by the meet organisers to Sportstar , the event has attracted stars like Amy Alcock (personal best 51.36s), a bronze medallist with the British team that won the women’s 4x400m relay at last year’s Indoor Worlds in Birmingham, Cuba’s former under-20 Pan-American champion Roxana Gomez (PB 51.46) and the seasoned Iga Baumgart-Witan (PB 51.12), who had won the 4x400m relay gold at the 2017 London Worlds.

Radhakrishnan Nair, the deputy national coach, explained that the Polish federation had invited only women for the event with slots for only two.

Dharun recovers, resumes training

Meanwhile, hurdler Dharun Ayyasamy, who had missed the Asian championships in Doha in April with a shin bone stress fracture, has resumed training.

“I’m too good, just started my training,” said Dharun from Spala on Tuesday evening.

Dharun revealed that the men quartermilers will have their first competition on July 2 in Poland.

“I don’t know about the place but it’s a couple of hours travel from here. Except me everybody will be running. I will start my competition on July 17,” he said.