Tokyo Olympics: India banks hopes on mixed relay team

All eyes will be on Indian mixed team, who made it to the Olympics by being among the top-16 teams.

Hyderabad: Indian track athletes’ story at the Olympics has been ‘so near yet so far’ till now. India after Independence failed to clinch even a single medal in the track events at the world’s biggest stage.

The only two medals – both silver by a British- Indian Norman Pritchard – was in the year 1900 when India sent the lone athlete for the competitions. However, there were a few occasions where the Indian athletes almost broke the medal drought. Late athlete Milkha Singh came close to winning a medal in the 400m event at the 1960 Rome Olympics before settling for a fourth place after losing to Malcolm Spence of South Africa in a photo-finish. 24 years later, PT Usha missed a bronze by 1/100th of a second in the 400m hurdles event at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Gurbachan Singh Randhawa finished fifth in the 100m hurdles in 1964 Olympics.

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In this edition, all eyes will be on Indian mixed team relay team in the 4x400m event, which is being introduced in the Tokyo Games. They made it to the Olympics by being among the top-16 teams. The team comprising Muhammad Anas, VK Vismaya, Nirmal Noah and Jisna Mathew finished third in the heats with a time of 3.16.14 seconds at the World Championships in Doha.

However, with injuries and poor form plaguing the athletes, the selected picked a new team. The two male athletes Sarthak Bhambri and Alex Anthony will be paired with two female runners fromRevathi Veeramani, Subha Venkatesan and Dhanalakshmi Sekar.

Indian star sprinter Dutee Chand will be competing in her second successive Olympics after the Odisha athlete made the cut through rankings in both 100m and 200m events. She was 41st and 50th in the 100m and 200m list respectively. Though she crashed out in heats in Rio, the racer, with experience on her side, says she hopes to make it to the semis. She created a national record with 11.17 seconds in the Indian Grand Prix but missed the Olympic mark by 0.2 seconds.

In a major disappointment, the women’s 4x400m relay team missed out after being placed just one rank outside the cut off at 17th. Their chances took a beating when Hima Das suffered a niggle during the Indian Grand Prix.

The men’s 4x400m relay team was placed 13th out of 16 to compete in Tokyo based on the timing of 3:01.89 clocked during the National Inter-State Championships recently.

400m hurdler M P Jabir qualified for the Tokyo Olympics through world rankings. Jabir had run a personal best of 49.78 seconds on Saturday last during the National Inter-State Championships, though he has a personal best of 49.13 seconds. For the first time, three Indians have qualified for the 20k race walk with experienced Sandeep Kumar leading the way.

A total of 26 athletes will represent India in the track and field competition at the Olympics but the medal hopes rest on star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra and the 4x400m mixed relay squad. The rest will look to reach the final in their respective disciplines or improve their personal performances.