Tokyo Olympian Priyanka Goswami and Akashdeep Singh qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympics and World Athletics Championships 2023 after meeting the qualification mark in the women’s and men’s 20km race walk, respectively, at the National Open Race Walking Championships on Tuesday.
In the women’s 20km race walk event in Morabadi, Priyanka clocked 1:28:50s to beat the qualifying standard of 1:29.20s set for the Athletics Worlds in Budapest and Paris Olympics and clinched the top spot.
While the Commonwealth Games silver medallist sealed a spot in the two marquee events but fell short of five seconds to break her own national record of 1:28.45s.
Another Tokyo Olympian Bhawna Jat clocked 1:29.44s to bag the silver medal but missed out on the quota places. Sonal Sukhwal won the bronze medal with a 1:31.03 timing.
In the men’s 20km event, Akshdeep clocked 1:19.55 seconds and breached the 1:20.10 qualification mark to qualify for both events. In the process, he beat the national record of 1:20:16, set by Sandeep Kumar at the 2021 National Race Walking Championships at Ranchi.
On the other hand, Suraj Panwar came close to qualifying for the Worlds and Paris Olympics but narrowly missed the berth by 0.01s after clocking 1:20.11s.
