With both its men’s and women’s 4x400m relay teams qualifying for this July’s Paris Olympics, there was double joy for India at the World Relays in Bahamas on Sunday.
And the mixed relay team, which failed to make the cut for the Olympics at the World Relays, will get another chance to qualify for Paris at the Asian Relays in Bangkok on May 20.
“Since the 4x400m men and women have already qualified (for Paris), I think we will do only the mixed relay at the Asians,” M.K. Rajmohan, the deputy chief athletics coach, told The Hindu from Thiruvananthapuram — the relay team’s training base — on Tuesday evening.
“Anyway, the selectors and the chief coach will decide on that after the Federation Cup (at Bhubaneswar, May 12-15).”
Rajmohan is confident that the mixed relay runners would make the cut for Paris in Bangkok though they will have to break the National record (3:14.34s, Asian Games, China, October 2023) to achieve the feat.
“We have two girls running 51-plus (split timings Jyothika Sri Dandi 51.36s, Subha Venkatesan 51.65, in women’s 4x400m at World Relays). And our boys are good, so they can definitely go below 3:13.50s,” he said.
With 14 slots for the Olympics already taken in Bahamas, only two berths for Paris are available in the mixed relay and India has to clock better than Italy’s 3:13.56s to make it to Paris through the World rankings route and pray that nobody else clocks a better time before the June 30 deadline.
Incidentally, India clocked 3:20.36s and finished sixth in its mixed relay heat in the first round of qualification on May 4. The side did not start the second qualification round on Sunday, as the team management felt that the men’s and women’s squads (some of them were supposed to have run the mixed relay too) had a better chance of qualifying for Paris.
So, who will run the mixed relay team at the Asian Relays?
“That is not finalised. Rajesh Ramesh (he pulled up with an injury in qualification round-1 which brought India a DNF in Bahamas) has to come back, Noah Nirmal Tom (the country’s fastest quartermiler this year) also has to come back... he has some pain in connection with the sciatic nerve, but he is getting better now. So I don’t know what they will decide.”
