India’s Basant Bahadur Rana qualified for the London Olympics in the men’s 50Km walk, meeting the grade at the World Race Walking Cup in Saransk, Russia, on Sunday.
Rana timed 4 hours 02 minutes and 13 seconds, a national record, to finish the event in 32nd place. The existing record of 4:16:22 is in the name of Gurdev Singh, set in 2005.
The ‘B’ standard for the Olympics is 4:09.00. Another Indian, Sandeep Kumar, also came under the ‘B’ standard, finishing 36th in 4:03:45. But if India are to field two walkers, both have to meet the stiffer ‘A’ standard – 3:59:00. Chandan Singh was 57th in 4:16:23 while in the team event, India were tenth.
In the 20Km walk on Saturday, Indians had finished fifth in the team event, a commendable achievement.
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