RISE OF INDIAN ATHLETICS

ATHLETICS UPDATES

We are halfway through 2017, and the year has started off well for Indian Athletics. The mega event of this year, the London World Championships is slotted for August and the qualification is up for grabs till 23rd July. India already has 32 Athletes qualified across 19 Events. This is the 1st time that Indian Athletes have qualified across so many events.

The month of July has already been a medals feast for Indian Athletes. It all started with Neeraj Chopra participating in the prestigious Diamond League, finishing a respectable 5th position in a 10-man elite field, which included Germany's Johannes Vetter and Olympic champion Thomas Rohler.

The Asian Athletics Championship(AAC, 2017) which took place at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar saw medals galore & record broken and set at ease for Indians. India topped medal tally for the first time in history with 29 medals(12 GOLD, 5 SILVER, and 12 BRONZE)and also beat China for the first time in Athletics history finishing ahead of them at this premier event. China finished at the second position with 8 gold, 7 silver, 5 bronze. It was also India's most number of medals at a single Asian Championships event and most number of golds too. The previous best was in New Delhi and Jakarta, where India clinched 21 medals(10 Golds). Neeraj Chopra, the poster boy of Indian Athletics, broke men's javelin meet record with an effort of 85.23 meters.

If the Indians dominated the Asian stage in first week of July, the second week saw Indians thumping their presence in World stage. In U18 Championships, 2017 at Nairobi, Damneet Singh Maan grabbed a SILVER in boys' hammer throw(74.20m) to give India their first ever medal in U18 Athletics World Championship.

On the same day, India got its first ever World Para Athletics Champion. In F46 category, Sundar Singh Gurjar,recorded his personal best effort of 60.36m to clinch GOLD in the men's javelin throw event. Sundar, a 21-year-old, who was disqualified last year at the Rio Paralympics after he turned up late for the event is now first Indian Para World Champion in History.

This meteoric rise of Indian Athletics is not a one month affair. It all started last July, when young Indian Javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra achieved something that no other Indian athlete had done ever. The 19-year-old became the first Indian world champion in any athletic event by winning gold at the IAAF World Under-20 Athletics Championship in Poland with a world-record throw (in U-20) of 86.48m. This Neeraj performance lit the spark that was needed to ignite enthusiasm for Athletics in this cricket fanatic nation.

Rio Olympics saw this positive vibe going as Lalita Babbar clocked a NR in 3000m SteepleChase to finish a highly optimistic 4th in the Heats and a 10th place finish in the finals. Babar's effort was the best performance by an Indian in a track event after PT Usha's fourth-place finish in the 400m hurdles in 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Another inspiring story from Rio, 2016 is of India's 20km race walker Manish Singh Rawat. Rawat finished 13th, ahead of some of the best race walkers in the world – including 4 former world champions, 3 Asian champions, 2 European champions and even 2 Olympic medalists. He registered a final timing of 1:21:21, less than a minute behind the bronze medalist.

For a country that missed the gold at the Rio Olympics, it was celebration time at Rio Paralympics, 2016. Devendra Jhajharia brought home GOLD, after he broke his own world record with a throw of 63.7m in the men's F46 Javelin Throw. His old record was at Athens, 2004 , where he created a WR with throw of 62.15m to become India's first gold medalist. It was twin delight as Mariyappan Thangavelu and Varun Singh Bhati bagged GOLD and BRONZE respectively in T42 High Jump. Deepa Malik won SILVER medal in the shot-put F-53 final by throwing her PB and thereby becoming country’s first ever woman to win a medal at the Paralympics.

From Javelin Thrower Neeraj setting World U20 Record in July, 2016 to Hammer Thrower Daman winning SILVER in U18 WC in July 2017; From Devendra setting World Record in Paralympics, 2016 to Sundar becoming first Para World Champion in 2017, Indian athletics is on a steady rise. If this determination, support and enthusiasm continues from the whole of the country, time is near when we will get our first World Champion and a long dreamt Olympic Medal in Athletics.