Anjali Devi beats World Championships qualification mark, AFI to conduct confirmatory trials

Having first entered the limelight by winning gold in the 400m race at the Open Nationals last years, Anjali Devi has achieved yet another milestone by qualifying for the World Championships. She recorded a time of 51.53 seconds at the Inter-State Athletics meet in Lucknow on Thursday, bettering her previous best of 51.79 seconds which she had set last year. She became the first Indian to have crossed the mark for the event so far, with the qualification time having been decided at 51.80 seconds.

However, the 20-year-old will be asked to prove her calibre once again at the Athletics Federation of India’s confirmatory camp before her name is sent for the tournament in Doha scheduled to take place from the 27th of September to the sixth of October. The step is being taken considering she has not been in the best of forms of late, as was seen in the national camp in Turkey. This had led to her being set back to the camp in Patiala, but she had not reported for the same citing various reasons for her five-month absence.

“Anjali will have to attend a confirmatory trial before the World Championships. AFI has a policy of making athletes, who are not part of the national camp or have stayed away for whatever reason, attend these trials once they qualify for an international competition,” AFI’s planning commission chairman Lalit Bhanot said to Indian Express, reported Scroll.in.

The AFI has in the past conducted similar trials, with the same being held just ahead of the Asian Games and the Asian Championships earlier in the year.

“We had conducted similar confirmatory trials for athletes like Sandeep Kumari [discus throw] and Monica Chaudhary [1,500 metres] as they were not part of the national camp but had qualified. AFI has been asking Anjali to join the national camp for the past few months but she has given different reasons for not doing so. So we will have to see her performance at the confirmatory trials. Only after that will we decide on her selection for the World Championships,” Bhanot concluded.