4th National Athletics Grand Prix

• 22 Jun 2021

• The fourth National Athletics Grand Prix, an Olympic qualifier was held at National Institute of Sports (NIS), Patiala (Punjab) on 21 June 2021.

Highlights

Shot Put

• Shot-putter Tajinderpal Singh Toor qualified for Tokyo Olympics with a new National record of 21.49m at the fourth Indian Grand Prix at Patiala on 21 June 2021 and bettering the Olympic qualifying mark by some distance.
• The Olympic mark is set at 21.10m.

Women’s 100 Meter Sprint Event

• Dutee Chand broke her own national record by clocking 11.17 seconds in 100-meter sprint heats at the National Athletics Grand Prix in Patiala but missed out on a Tokyo Olympics spot by a whisker, which was 11.15 seconds.

Women’s 200 Meter Sprint Event

• Hima Das won the women's 200m race at IGP4 with a personal best 22.88 seconds - the fastest by an Indian woman over the distance since Saraswati Saha’s national record of 22.82s in 2002.
• She, however, missed the Olympic qualification time by 0.08 seconds (The Olympic mark is 22.80s).

Women’s Discus Throw

• Already qualified for Tokyo Olympics, Kamalpreet Kaur improved her own national record with a throw of 66.59m in the women's discus throw. Her previous best was 65.06m which she had achieved at Federation Cup in March 2021. Notably, Kamalpreet had become the first woman from the country to breach the 65m mark in March this year.
• But her performance will not be counted as the new national record as she was the lone competitor in the event.
• As per rules, for national record purposes, the number of competitors should at least be three. But it will be considered for other purposes like ranking.

Relay Race: Indian Team Failed to cross Olympic Mark

• The quartet of Hima Das, Dutee Chand, S Dhanalakshmi and Archana Suseendran clocked 43.37 seconds to win the race ahead of India 'B' team (48.02 seconds) and Maldives (50.74) in the three-team race.
• The Indian team bettered the previous record of 43.42 seconds set in 2016 in Almaty by the quartet of Merlin K Joseph, HM Jyothi, Srabani Nanda and Dutee.
• But the quartet failed to clock below 43.05 seconds needed to be among the top 16 teams in the Road to Tokyo list. Sixteen teams will run in the women's 4x100m relay race in Tokyo Games.