Sreeshankar breaches Olympic qualification mark, sets new national record

Sreeshankar's 8.26-metre leap - a new long jump national record - lit up the day at the Federation Cup.

Sreeshankar breaks his own long jump national record (Twitter/AFI)

Sreeshankar broke his own long jump national record and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics with a 8.26-metre leap at the Federation Cup Senior National Athletics Championships on Tuesday.

The qualifying mark for the Olympics was 8.22m. Sreeshankar’s previous best had been 8.20m.

That’s a ticket for #Tokyo2020 for Murli Sreeshankar in that pic.

Sree jumped 8.26m in his 5th attempt & improved his own National Record! Prev. record 8.20m

Well done champ!@SonySportsIndia pic.twitter.com/WSgBuWp6hs

— Athletics Federation of India (@afiindia) March 16, 2021

He began with a 8.02m jump before improving to 8.04m, 8.07m and 8.09m in his next three jumps before touching 8.26m in his fifth attempt. He had a no mark (NM) in his final jump.

Another Kerala jumper Muhammed Anees Yahiya (8m) and S Lokesh (7.60m) of Karnataka took the silver and bronze respectively.

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Five race walkers (KT Irfan, Sandeep Kumar and Rahul Rohilla in men’s 20km event and Bhawana Jat and Priyanka Goswami in women’s 20km event), two javelin throwers (Neeraj Chopra and Shivpal Singh), Avinash Sable (men’s 3000m steeplechase) and the mixed 4x400m relay team have earlier qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.

National record holder Dutee Chand was beaten to second place by S Dhanalakshmi, while Hima Das was disqualified after a false start in a much-anticipated women’s 100m sprint final.

This is the 8.26m jump that earned young Sreeshankar a spot in the #Tokyo2020 Olympics. @IExpressSports
Video credit: @afiindia pic.twitter.com/cFBZUaqTsn

— Andrew Amsan (@AndrewAmsan) March 16, 2021

The 22-year-old Dhanalakshmi of Tamil Nadu took the gold by clocking 11.39 seconds ahead of Dutee (11.58) of Odisha to become the fastest woman of the championships on the second day of competitions at the NIS Campus.

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Another Tamil Nadu runner Archana Suseendran was third in 11.76.

This was after Hima, who was running in the shorter sprint races of 100m and 200m instead of her per event 400m, was disqualified after a false start.

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The much-anticipated final did not live up to the expectations as Hima was shown the red card, while Dutee and Dhanalakshmi did not come anywhere near the Olympic qualification mark of 11.15 seconds.

Gurindervir Singh of Punjab won the men’s 100m final in 10.32 seconds, while Elakkiyadasan Kannada of Tamil Nadu (10.43) and Maharashtra’s Satish Krishnakumar (10.56) were second and third respectively. National record holder Amiya Kumar Mallick of Odisha finished seventh with a time of 10.75.

Veteran M R Poovamma, representing Karnataka, took the gold in women’s 400m, winning the final race in 53.57 seconds. Tamil Nadu’s Subha Venkatesan (54.48) and Kiran Pahal of Haryana took the silver and bronze respectively.

(With PTI inputs)