Indian Grand Prix-1: Athletes eye Olympic marks

Reigning Asian Games champion and Asian Championships’ shot put gold-medallist Tajinderpal Singh Toor will be eyeing an Olympic berth.

Bengaluru: The Road to Paris Olympics has been gathering steam and a clutch of top Indian athletes will be looking to book their tickets to the French capital in the opening leg of the Indian Grand Prix here on Tuesday.

Leading the charge in trying to attain the Olympic qualifying standard at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium will be the reigning Asian Games champion and Asian Championships’ shot put gold-medallist Tajinderpal Singh Toor.

The 29-year-old Punjabi, who checked into the City last week as one of the brand ambassadors for a 10K run, is certain to grab the gold given he has only two other not-so-strong competitors to fight against.

The national record holder, however, knows it’s not the gold that matters but the distance given how close the Olympics are. The Olympic qualifying standard is 21.50 metres, a distance which he has surpassed in the past.

So come Tuesday evening when the weather is expected to be hot, Tajinderpal will be looking to raise his stock higher by securing a Paris ticket that willl give the continental champion enough time to train for the biggest event of the season.

A quartet of athletes to watch out for are long-jumper Muhammed Anees, triple-jumper Eldhose Paul, Karnataka’s javelin-thrower Manu DP and talented women’s long-jumper Shaili Singh.

Manu is third in the pecking order behind reigning Olympic and Asian Games champion Neeraj Chopra and Kishore Kumar Jena, a silver medallist at the continental bash last year in Hangzhou.

Both Neeraj and Jena have sealed their Paris tickets but Manu, hoping to maximise the home conditions, will be keen to prove his worth as well. However, he faces a Herculean challenge as he will have to hurl the javelin past his personal best of 84.35 metres with the qualifying mark set at 85.50.

Shaili, the gifted 20-year-old who trains under Robert Bobby George, has been tipped for bigger things given her steady rise in the circuit. While the Paris mark is 6.86 metres, Shaili, who won a silver at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok last year, has only a personal best of 6.76M. Whether she can uncork something special and show that she indeed is one for the future, remains to be seen.

A fair amount of spotlight is certain to be on Hima Das, the sprinter who will be returning to action following a National Anti-Doping Agency’s withdrawal of her suspension. The 24-year-old, who will be competing in the 200m, was provisionally suspended by the NADA last year for three wherabouts failures in 12 months.