After drawing a blank on the opening day, the Indian men’s and women’s 4x400m relay teams secured qualifications for the Paris Olympics by finishing second in their respective second-round heats at the World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas on Monday.
In the women’s competition, the quartet of Rupal Chaudhary, M R Poovamma, Jyothika Sri Dandi and Subha Venkatesan clocked 3 minutes and 29.35 seconds to finish second behind Jamaica (3:28.54) in heat number one to book a Paris Games ticket.
Rupal replaced Vithya Ramraj from the team which competed in the first qualifying round. The Indian women’s team had finished fifth in the first-round qualifying heat on Sunday with a time of 3 minutes and 29.74 seconds.
Later, the men’s quartet of Muhammed Anas Yahiya, Muhammed Ajmal, Arokia Rajiv and Amoj Jacob clocked a season’s best time of 3:03.23 to finish behind the USA (2:59.95) in heat 2 to seal their Olympics berth.
Arokia Rajiv replaced injured Rajesh Ramesh, who had to pull out of the men’s 4x400m relay race a day earlier, resulting in a DNF (did not finish) for the Indian team.
The top two teams in each of the three heats in the second round were to qualify for the Olympics to be held from July 26 to August 11.
With this, India now has 19 Paris-bound track and field athletes and the list includes defending javelin throw champion Neeraj Chopra among others.
The athletics events at the Games will begin on August 1.