Asian Athletics Championships | Want to better last edition’s results, says Dutee Chand
Getty
After the Indian women’s 4x100m relay team qualified for the upcoming 23rd Asian Athletics Championships to be held in Doha this month, Dutee Chand has said that she has an aim of improving the result from the previous edition. The team clocked 44.12s in the confirmatory trails on Saturday.
A new-look Indian women’s relay team for the 4x100m race has made the cut for the upcoming Asian Championships which will be held in Qatar’s capital city from April 21 to April 24. Dutee Chand led by example in the relay event in which the athletes were trained by Dutee’s personal coach N Ramesh. The team, which comprises of Hina, Archana Suseendran and K Ranga alongside Dutee, clocked 44.12 seconds to finish below the Athletics Federation of India (AFI)’s qualification standard of 44.50 seconds.
“I had already qualified for the 200m. We were practising hard with the relay team. The trial event was held yesterday under the guidance of Nagpuri Ramesh sir. We did well in the run and are very happy with the timing that we managed to achieve yesterday. All the sprinters also ran well and we are training hard and our baton exchange has been good. I have faith on the relay team and am hopeful that apart from an individual event we will also win a medal in the women’s relay,” Dutee told SportsCafe.
Dutee was also a part of the relay team in the previous edition of the championships which was held at Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar and the team had finished third in 2017. Srabani Nanda, Merlyn Joseph and Himashree Roy were the other athletes in the 4x100m squad two years back which had won the bronze medal.
However, the Odisha athlete is hopeful that the result will improve this year in Doha as the athletes are clocking good speeds as compared to the previous team.
“In the last event in Bhubaneswar in 2017, we didn’t do that well and had to finish only at the third position. This is a better team than the previous one and all the members are clocking good speed so we expect the result to be better this year,” the Odisha athlete expressed.
Apart from the relay team, K Gomathi was the only athlete who managed to cross the qualifying standards for the Asian Championships. She clocked 2:04.12 in 800m race which is below the standard timing of 2:05.00.
