Race walkers Ram Baboo and Manju Rani set new national records in men’s and women’s 35km events respectively at the National Open Race Walking Championship in Ranchi, on Wednesday.
Along with claiming the gold medals, the duo also secured berths at the delayed Asian Games schedule to take place in September this year.
Earlier this week, Priyanka Goswami and Akshdeep Singh qualified for the 2023 World Championships and 2024 Paris Olympics after winning the women’s and men’s 20km race walk events respectively.
Uttar Pradesh walker Baboo, who held the previous national record of 2:36:34, set the new mark at 2:31:36 to go comfortably past the 2:35:00 standard the Athletics Federation of India had set as a qualification mark for the Asiad.
Last year’s champion Juned Khan of Haryana finished second with a timing of 2:36:04, followed by Uttarakhand’s Chandan Singh at 2:36:55.
In the women’s section, Punjab’s Manju set the new women’s national record in the event at 2:57:54, after finishing just 36 seconds better than the Asian Games standard of 2:58:30.
Manju’s effort helped her break last year’s winner Ramandeep Kaur’s national record of 3:00:04.
Payal from Uttarakhand finished second with a timing of 3:05:34, while Uttar Pradesh’s Bandana Patel finished third with 3:11:35 on the clock. The two winners however, failed to make the cut for the 2023 World Championships. The men’s qualification standard for the event in Budapest was set at 2:29:40 hrs and the women’s was 2:51:30.
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