Mumbai’s sprint hurdler Siddhanth Thingalaya broke his own national record at the Altis Invitational Meet in the US, on Saturday and qualified for the World Athletics Championships to be held in London in August.
The 26-year-old ONGC officer clocked 13.48s, the time which is also the entry standard for the London Worlds, as he won the event in Arizona, and broke his national record of 13.54s set a year ago at the same venue.
“This will be my first senior Worlds…trained so hard this year,” Siddhanth told The Hindu from the US on Sunday.
Siddhanth narrowly missed making the cut for the Rio Olympics last year and he appeared to be out of luck early this season, too, when he clocked a wind-aided 13.43s for the 110m hurdles event.
“Today, it was a 0.9 wind and perfectly legal,” he said before catching a flight to Mumbai.
