29-year-old Race Walking champion Irfan KT has become the first Indian from athletics to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The national record holder clocked in 1 hour 20 minutes and 57 seconds to qualify for Tokyo Olympics as he finished fourth at the Asian Race Walking championship in Nomi, Japan. The feat also earned him a spot in the upcoming IAAF World Championship, which is slated to be organised from September end in Doha.
Olympics qualification event for race walk occasions and long distance races have started from 1 January 2019 which will go on till 31 May 2020. No other Indian from athletics has been able to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics so far. All the qualifications of other events will start from 1 May 2019 running through 29 June 2020. Irfan KT had also represented India in the 2012 London Olympics and this will be his second Olympics. Two other Indian race walkers, namely Devinder and Ganapati have also qualified for the World Championship.
In 2018, Irfan KT was excluded from the Common Wealth Games alongside Rakesh Babu for infringement of the ‘no needle approach’ in Gold Coast. He was excluded in the 20 km race walk event of the 2018 Asian Games after he received his third cautioning for “loss of contact”.
Japan’s Toshikazu Yamanishi won the 20 km race walk event with excellent timing of 1 hour 17 minutes and 15 seconds while Kazakhastan’s Georgiy Sheiko and Kaorea’s Byeongkwang Choe finished second and third, clocking in 1 hour 20 minutes 21 seconds and 1 hour 20 minutes and 40 seconds, respectively.
Aside from Irfan, Saurabh Chaudhury earned the Olympic spot in 10m air pistol event after winning a gold medal at the ISSF World Cup, held last month in New Delhi. Apurvi Chandela and Anjum Moudgil had secured two Olympic quotas when they finished fourth and second respectively in the women’s 10m air rifle at the World Championships, in September 2018.
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