Jaipur: The race walk competition course for the two-day National Championships which begins here on Saturday has come for praise from international experts as the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) hopes to host global events here.
Irishman Pierce O'Callaghan, who is an IAAF race walking judge, termed the Jaipur competition course, which will see top Indian race walkers in action tomorrow and on Sunday, as world class.
"It is a world class course. I have inspected it. The road (on which the course runs) is a great, clean, smooth and straight one kilometer lap. It should host other international events in future,"
O'Callaghan, who also conducted an IAAF Level-I Race Walking Technical Officials course here with high number of participants.
The other IAAF technical official here is Fung Wang Tak of Hong Kong.
Indian Championships
20 km men
Gurmeet Singh, who had already qualified for the Olympics, clinched the gold medal with the improved timing of 1:21:24 to finish first in men’s 20km Race Walk competition. His previous timing was 1:21:36, which he created in Asian 20km Race Walking Championship in Nomi, Japan in 2015. All top seven finisher today in men’s event ran below the Olympic qualification mark of 1:24.
K. Ganapathy clocked 1:21:51 to get the silver medal and also achieved the Rio qualification mark followed by the Sandeep Kumar, who clocked 1:21:56 on the third position. Apart from top three, Irfan K.T. who finished on 10th position in London Olympics also qualified for the Olympics with a timing of 1:22.14 finishing fourth in the competition. Manish Singh finished fifth in 1:22:18. Devender Singh clocked 1:22:40 and Neeraj clocked 1:23:34 to finish sixth and seventh in the competition and also both of them achieved the Rio Olympics qualification mark.
20 km women
Khushbir Kaur crossed the finished line in 1:34.52 to get the Gold medal in women’s 20km event. Sapana who also have qualified for the Olympics earlier finished second with the timing of 1:36.59. The young promising upcoming athlete Ms. Priyanka finished third in 1:40.59. The Rio qualification mark for women’s 20km is 1:36.
50 km men
In men’s 50km race walk event Basant Bahadur Rana from Delhi won the Gold medal by clocking 4:07:24. He missed the Rio qualification mark just by one minute 24 seconds. The revised Rio qualification mark for 50km is 4:06:00. Chandan Singh from Uttarakhand finished second in the event. Chandan who have already achieved Rio qualification in men’s 20km, clocked 4:09:50 for the Silver medal in the event. Jitender Singh clocked 4:12:10 for the bronze medal.
10km junior women
Neena K.T. from Kerala finished on the top of the podium in Junior women’s 10km race walk competition, which flagged off at 6:30am. She clocked 53:12.49 to cross the finish line. Bhawna Jat from Rajasthan finished second in 53:27:79 for silver medal in the event. Priyanka Patel from Uttar Pradesh clocked 53:32:95 to finish third for the bronze medal.
10 km junior men
In 10km Junior men’s race walk competition Vikash Singh from Bihar won the gold medal by clocking 44:32:50. Naveen from Delhi clocked 4:37:76 for the silver medal and Eknath Turamberker clocked 44:55:67 for the bronze medal.
Full results in the section Results or download directly from this link: click here
