“When You Really Want to Win, You Win More”- IM Vantika Agrawal
Vantika was part of the women's team comprising Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, and Tania Sachdev, which won gold at the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad .
National record holder Long-Jumper Murali Sreeshankar has qualified for the World athletics championship finals on the first day of the competition. He became the first Indian male long jumper to achieve this feat. The World Athletics championship Oregon has begun today.
23-year-old Murali Sreeshankar, who hails from Palakkad, Kerala, and ranked 13 in the world, came at the second spot in the season top list. He had the best jump of 8.00m to finish second in qualification round Group B and seventh overall. Murali ranked 13th in the Long Jump rankings and holds the national record of 8.36 meters set in 2022.
Other Indian contingents of Long-Jumpers, Jeswin Aldrin and Muhammed Anees Yahiya finished 9TH and 11th in the group A qualification round with their best jumps of 7.79m and 7.73m respectively but failed to qualify for the final round.
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The finals will be held on Sunday, and those who have achieved 8.15m or the top 12 from both groups combined will compete in the finals. However, Murali Sreeshankar could not manage to pass the 8.15m mark, but he managed to grab a place in the final as his performance was enough to give him a place in the top 12.
In qualifying rounds, Japan’s Yuki Hashioka (8.18m) and Marquis Dendy (8.16m) of the USA crossed the 8.15m mark. In 2018 Sreeshankar won a bronze medal at the 2018 Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Gifu.
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