Hima Das back in action settled from the silver medal

Ace sprinter Hima Das, returning to competitive action for the first time since June, had to settle for the silver medal in the women’s 200m race at the Indian Grand Prix 1 2022 athletics competition in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on Sunday.

Hima Das clocked 23.45 seconds to finish 0.24 seconds behind Tokyo Olympian  Dhanalakshmi Sekar, who beat both Hima and Dutee Chand in the same event at last year’s Federation Cup. Dutee Chand did not compete in Sunday’s meet.

Dhanalakshmi’s gold medal-winning time of 23.21 was just short of the Athletics Federation of India’s qualifying standards for the Asian Games 2022 (23.17) and Commonwealth Games 2022 (22.70).

In the women’s 400m, 18-year-old Priya Mohan (52.91) won gold ahead of Rio 2016 Olympian M R Poovamma (53.39 seconds).

Priya Mohan, who won the 400m gold and also beat Dutee Chand for the 200m crowns at the inter-university championships earlier this month, managed to breach the Asian Games qualifying cutoff (53.19) but fell short of the CWG mark (50.13s).

The men’s 400m, meanwhile, saw Amol Jacob (45.98) and Tom Noah Nirmal (46.08), both members of the Asian record-setting Indian men’s 4x400m relay team at the Tokyo Olympics, take the gold and silver, respectively.

Rajiv Arokia, another member of the Tokyo Olympics relay team, had to settle for bronze in the men’s 200m. His timing of 21.49 was 0.55 seconds off the gold medal winner Amlan Borgohain.

With Tokyo Olympian Murali Sreeshankar not starting in the men’s long jump event, Jeswin Aldrin took the gold medal with a best effort of 8.20m – just 0.06m short of Sreeshankar’s national record of 8.26m. Aldrin met both the Asiad and CWG marks.

The women’s long jump, too, saw an impressive performance from Ancy Sojan, whose gold-winning jump of 6.55m also met both the Asian and Commonwealth Games qualifying mark.

Both marks were breached in men’s javelin throw as well, with Manu DP recording a personal best of 82.43m to bag top podium. Silver medallist Rohit Yadav (80.03m), too, was ahead of the Asiad cutoff of 80m.

Asian championships gold medal-winning middle distance runner Ajay Kumar Saroj, meanwhile, won the men’s 1500m race with a timing of 3:43.53. Olympian shot putter Manpreet Kaur had to be content with a silver behind Abha Khatua.