Kamalpreet Kaur qualifies for Olympics in discus throw

The 25-year-old Kamalpreet dramatically heaved the discus to 65.06m in her first throw to the surprise of the sizeable crowd at the NIS here. The Punjab athlete then fouled all her remaining five attempts. The Tokyo Olympics qualifying mark in women’s discus throw is 63.50m.

Kamalpreet’s earlier personal best was 61.04m, which she recorded in 2018. She eclipsed the nine-year-old earlier national record of 64.76m, which was in the name of Krishna Poonia.

Competing in her first event after the 2018 Asian Games, veteran Seema Punia finished second with a best effort of 62.64m. The 37-year-old missed the Olympics qualification mark by less than a metre. Sonal Goyal of Delhi took bronze with a best throw of 52.11m.

Five race walkers (KT Irfan, Sandeep Kumar and Rahul Rohilla in the men’s 20km event, and Bhawana Jat and Priyanka Goswami in the women’s 20km event), two javelin throwers (Neeraj Chopra and Shivpal Singh), Avinash Sable (men’s 3000m steeplechase), M Sreeshankar (men’s long jump) and the mixed 4x400 metres relay team had qualified for the Tokyo Olympics earlier.

Hima Das of Assam won the women’s 200m race with a new meet record time of 23.21 seconds and took revenge for her semi-final heat defeat to S Dhanalakshmi of Tamil Nadu. Archana Suseendran (Tamil Nadu) was third with a time of 23.60s. Hima, who has a personal best time of 23.10s, is yet to qualify for the Olympics, whose required mark is 22.80s.