National report holder K. T. Irfan Sunday became the first Indian from athletics to qualify for the following year’s Olympics while completing fourth in the 20 km occasion of the Asian Race Walking Championships in Nomi, Japan.
The 29-year-old antique Irfan clocked 1 hour 20 minutes and 57 seconds, bettering the Tokyo Olympics qualification general time of 1 hour 21 minutes.
The Olympics qualification period for race walk occasions and marathon races started on January 1 this year and will run until May 31, 2020. The Olympic qualification period for all other athletics activities will begin on May 1 this year and run until June 29, 2020.
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Irfan, who has a private excellent and the countrywide report of 1:20:21, which he did for the duration of his tenth region end in the 2012 Olympics, additionally qualified for this year’s World Championships (September 27-October 6) in Doha, Qatar, as he bettered the qualifying mark of 1:22:30.
The Kerala race walker won the 20 km event in the National Open Race Walk Championships in Chennai last month with a time of one:26:18.
He became one of the Indian athletes expelled from the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games for not adhering to the ‘no needle policy.’ He was disqualified in the 20 km race walk occasion of the 2018 Asian Games after receiving his third warning for “loss of contact. ”
Japan’s Toshikazu Yamanishi won the 20 km race stroll with an outstanding time of 1:17:15, while Kazakhstan’s Georgiy Sheiko and Korea’s Byeongkwang Choe were second and 0.33 in 1:20:21 and 1:20:40, respectively.
The Asian and World record in men’s 20 km race walk goes to Japanese Yusuke Suzuki, who clocked 1:16:36 in the 2015 version of the same championships in Nomi.
Two other Indians, Devinder Singh and Ganapathi Krishnan, also qualified for the World Championships as they clocked 1:21:22 and 1:22:12, respectively. They had completed 2d and fifth within the Chennai National Race Walk Championships with timings of one:26:19 and 1:26: Forty-three.
In the women’s 20 km race stroll event, Soumya Baby finished fourth with a timing of one:36:08, properly out-of-doors Olympics qualifying general of 1:31:00, and World Championships qualifying popular of 1:33:30.