Dutee Chand breaks her own national record on her way to gold

Star Indian sprinter Dutee Chand broke her own national record, clocking 11:22 seconds in the women's 100 metres semifinals on her way to the gold medal at the 59th National Open Athletics Championships at Ranchi on Friday. A few days after failing to reach 100m semis at the World Championships in Doha, the 23-year-old excelled her previous timing of 11.26s which she had set at the Asian Championships in April this year. 

Moving closer to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics qualification

Dutee, now moved closer to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics qualification mark - of 11.15 seconds for the 100m event - as the qualification period ends in June 2020. While she had equalled Rachita Mistry's 11.26-second effort at the Asian Championship, Dutee's time of 11.22 seconds in the semifinals on Friday finally gave her the sole ownership of the National record. Dutee later clocked 11.25 seconds in the final to win the gold, leaving Archana Suseendran and Himashree Roy in the wake. At Doha, she had managed 11.48 to finish a disappointing seventh in her heats. "A couple of days ago, I had the wrong belief that my body was tired at the end of the season. I recovered well to be able to break the last national mark twice this evening," Dutee said. 

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Other winners at the National Championships

Amiya Kumar Malik, who has been struggling to find his form the whole season, won the gold medal and the title of the fastest man in the National Open. He won the men's 100m in 10.46 seconds, breaking the beam a hundredth of a second ahead of Malaysia's Jonathan Anak Nyepa. Gurindervir Singh from Punjab emerged as the winner of the bronze medal by a margin of 0.0044 seconds from his team-mate Harjit Singh. There was some positive news for long jumper M Sreeshankar who leapt to 7.93m to lead the 12 qualifiers for the final. Earlier, in a close finish, Haryana's Rahul Rohilla, 23, won the men's 20m race walking ahead of the more seasoned K Ganapathi (AFI) and Sandeep Kumar (Services).

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(With ANI inputs)