Patiala: Veteran discus thrower Seema Punia on Tuesday qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games with a gold-winning effort of 63.72m, on the final day of the National Inter-State Athletics Championships here.The 37-year-old Seema, who had won silver at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and bronze at the 2018 Asian Games, breached the Olympic qualifying mark of 63.50m. She became the 12th individual Indian athlete to qualify for the Tokyo Games.
Seema went past the 60m mark on four of her five legal throws and found the power to breach the Olympic qualifying mark in her fourth try. She will be taking part in her fourth Olympics after the 2004, 2012 and 2016 editions of the Games.
Without a world ranking since nursing a glutes (muscles of buttocks) injury, Seema was taking part in only her third competition since the 2018 Asian Games. Seema will be the second Indian woman to take part in the event at the Tokyo Olympics after national record holder Kamalpreet Kaur.
Sprinter Hima Das, who sustained a hamstring injury on Saturday while running 100m heats, is set to miss the Tokyo Olympics as the women’s 4x100m relay team, of which she was a part earlier, clocked 44.15 seconds, well outside the targeted time of 43.03 seconds. Hima also tried to compete in the women’s 200m final, chasing 22.80 seconds to qualify for Olympics. But, she finished fifth in 25.03 seconds. PD Anjali (Kerala) and Lovepreet Singh (Punjab) were the winners of the women’s and men’s 200m sprints in 24.01 seconds and 21.04 seconds respectively.
Tuesday is the deadline of the Olympics qualification period and the World Athletics will publish the list of qualified athletes for the Tokyo Games on Thursday. The AFI’s selection committee will meet on Saturday to pick the Indian team for the Olympics.
With World Athletics responding positively to the Athletics Federation of India’s request to consider the 3:01.89 clocked in the 4x400m heats on Friday, the men’s team’s 13th place was restored ahead of Germany, Poland and Czech Republic.