Ace sprinter from Odisha, Dutee Chand on Monday shattered her own national record by clocking 11.17 seconds in 100-meter sprint heats at the National Athletics Grand Prix in Patiala.
However, Dutee missed out on a Tokyo Olympics spot by a whisker, which was 11.15 seconds. The previous record was 11.21 seconds, which also created by Dutee. Her superb sprint, however, was 0.02 seconds off the automatic qualification mark in women’s 100m.
Shot Putter Tajinder Pal Singh crossed the Olympic Qualification mark with a throw of 21.49m and broke his own National Record. Besides, Kamalpreet Kaur improved her own national record with a throw of 66.59m.
The quartet of Hima Das, Dutee Chand, S Dhanalakshmi and Archana Suseendran clocked 43.37 seconds to win the race ahead of India ‘B’ team (48.02 seconds) and Maldives (50.74) in the three-team race. The Indian team bettered the previous record of 43.42 seconds set in 2016 in Almaty by the quartet of Merlin K Joseph, H M Jyothi, Srabani Nanda and Chand.
