IAAF World Championships | Tejinder Pal Singh, Jinson Johnson bow out in qualification rounds of respective events

The Punjab athlete Toor produced a season’s best effort of 20.43m to finish eighth in the Group B qualification round and 18th overall out of 34 competitors. He was the first to take the field but with eight shot-putters from Group A having already touched the 20.90m mark which is the automatic final round qualifying mark, it was a difficult task for Toor to go through. The 24-year-old has a personal best of 20.75m, which is also a national record.

There was more disappointment in store for India as the 28-year-old Jinson Johnson, who broke his own national record just last month with a time of 3:35.24, failed to preserve enough energy for the home stretch and ran a below-par 3 minutes 39.86 seconds to end 10th in his first-round heats on Thursday. He was among the leading five till the final bell but lost steam towards the end as he was overtaken by one competitor after another and finished more than four seconds outside his best timing. He finished 34th overall out of 43 runners.