In a significant setback to India’s Olympic Games preparation, the nationwide girls’s 4x400m relay group has pulled out of subsequent month’s World Relays in Poland, mentioned a supply within the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) on Tuesday.
“The group is unfit. The quickest runner within the squad, Anjali Devi, is but to get well from an harm she had sustained in March,” the source told IANS, explaining the reason for skipping the World Relays.
One of the athletes said: “Three main runners are unfit. And there is no substitute.”
The World Relays, scheduled to be held on May 1 and a pair of in Chorzow, is a qualifying competitors for Tokyo Olympics in addition to 2022 World Athletics Championships in Oregon, USA.
As if to additional compound the nationwide group’s distress, Jisna Mathew, one other key runner of the ladies’s 400m relay group, has additionally pulled out of the World Relays.
This month, the AFI had shortlisted six athletes for the 4x400m relay group. They had been: MR Poovamma, Suhba Venkatesh, Kiran, Anjali Devi, R Revathi, VK Vismaya and Jisna Mathew.
The AFI will, nonetheless, ship males’s 4x400m and ladies’s 4x100m relay squads to Poland.
During the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships, India’s combined 4x400m relay group had certified for the Tokyo Olympics. The AFI is hopeful the ladies’s 100m relay group would additionally make the lower throughout World Relays.
Top 16 relay groups on the finish of the qualification interval in June will likely be eligible to compete within the Olympics.
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