Discus thrower Seema books Olympic berth

PATIALA: Discus thrower Seema Punia, bronze medallist at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games, booked her ticket for the Tokyo Olympic Games with a gold medal-winning throw of a 63.72m meters on the concluding day of the National Inter-State Athletics Championships here on Tuesday.

Seema, 37, bettered the Olympic qualification mark of 63.50m. Her Tuesday's performance was also better than the meet record of 62.49m, set by Neelam J. Singh in 2000 in Chennai.

"I have worked hard over the last two and half years since the Asian Games and am happy that I could secure qualification on Tuesday," said Seema after qualifying for the Olympics.

The seasoned thrower from Uttar Pradesh opened her Olympic qualification campaign with a throw of 59.31m and booked her Olympic ticket with her fourth attempt.

Sonal Goyal of Delhi took home silver with a modest throw of 49.50m while Madhu Renu of Rajasthan got bronze with an average throw of 47.55m.

In the other finals scheduled for the final day, the gold winning performance of almost all the athletes weren't good enough to fetch them Olympic berths.

Tuesday, June 29, was the last day to achieve the Olympic qualification mark.

The men's 4x400m relay is on course to compete at the July 23-August 8 Olympics by virtue of being in the top 16 world ranking. But the women's 4x100m relay team failed to achieve the time of 43.05 seconds to stay in the race.

Only the top 16 world ranking teams are eligible to qualify for the Olympics before the June 29 deadline.

In the women's 1,500m race, pre-race favourite Harmilan Bains of Punjab was expected to make the cut for Olympics, but her gold medal winning time of 4 minutes 15.52 seconds was nearly 11 seconds slower than the qualifying time of 4 minutes 04 seconds. IANS

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