Race walker Irfan becomes first Indian to qualify for Tokyo Olympics

New Delhi: National record holder KT Irfan became Sunday the first Indian from athletics to qualify for the next year’s Tokyo Olympics while finishing fourth in the 20 km event of the Asian Race Walking Championships in Nomi, Japan.

The 29-year-old Irfan clocked 1 hour 20 minutes and 57 seconds to better the Tokyo Olympics qualification standard of 1 hour 21 minutes.

Japan’s Toshikazu Yamanishi won the event with an impressive time of 1:17:15 second while Kazakhstan’s Georgiy Sheiko and Korea’s Byeongkwang Choe were second and third in clocking times of 1:20:21s and 1:20:40s respectively.

The Olympics qualification period for race walk events and marathon race has begun from January 1 this year and will run till May 31, 2020. The Olympics qualification period for all other athletics events will start from May 1 this year and will run till June 29, 2020.

No other Indian from athletics has so far qualified for Tokyo Olympics.

Irfan, who has a personal best as well as national record of 1:20:21 seconds which he did during his 10th place finish in 2012 Olympics, also qualified for this year’s World Championships (September 27-October 6) in Doha, Qatar as he bettered the qualifying mark of 1:22:30 seconds.

The Kerala race walker had won the 20 km event in the National Open Race Walk Championships in Chennai last month with a time of 1:26:18 seconds. He was one of the two Indian athletes who were expelled from the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games for not adhering to the ‘no needle policy’ of the Games.

Two other Indians, Devinder Singh and Ganapathi Krishnan also qualified for the World Championships as they clocked 1:21:22s and 1:22:12s respectively.

PTI