Annu Rani qualifies for women's javelin throw finals at World Athletics Championships

While all the Indian fans are waiting to watch Neeraj Chopra in action during the World Athletics Championships in the US, India's Annu Rani on Thursday qualified for the final of the women’s javelin throw event. For Rani, this will be her second successive women’s javelin throw final at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. The ace Indian javelin thrower first reached the finals of the World Athletics Championships back in 2019 when the event took place at Doha in Qatar. 

World Athletics Championships: Annu Rani enters javelin final

Coming to Annu Rani's performance in the ongoing World Athletics Championships, the Indian athlete threw the javelin to a distance of 59.60m to qualify for the World Athletics Championship final as one of the 12 best performers after failing to cross the automatic qualifying mark of 62.5m. Only three athletes managed to qualify for the javelin throw final via automatic qualification ie Japan’s Haruka Kitaguchi who produced the best throw of the qualification, hitting the 64.32 mark in her first attempt. China's Shiying Liu and Lithuania’s Livia Jasiunaite had the second and third best throws at 63.86m and 63.80m respectively. 

Annu Rani began the competition by registering a foul. However, the 29-year-old bounced back to register a clean throw of 55.35m in her second attempt. The Indian went all out in the third attempt with Annu Rani javelin throw covering a distance of 59.60m, which helped her finish fifth in Qualification B and eighth overall in the competition.

Annu Rani national record

Before the World Athletics Championships, Annu Rani had broken her own javelin throw record during AFI's Indian Open javelin throw competition. The athlete from Meerut hurled the spear to a distance of 63.82m, making an improvement of 58cm over. The distance was enough to overtake her own earlier national record of 63.24m, which she set in Patiala back in March, 2021. She rewrote the national record for the eighth time since she first clinched it from Suman Devi way back in June, 2014.