Sandeep, Khushbir set national records

Sandeep Kumar and Khushbir Kaur set national records in the men’s 50km event and women’s 20km event respectively, on the first day of the IAAF World Race Walking Cup at Taicang, China on Saturday.

Sandeep finished 23rd in his event, clocking 3:56:22s to better Basanta Bahadur Rana’s national record timing of 3:56:48s set during the 2012 the London Olympics. Sandeep had a personal best of 4:02:19s before this effort.

Later, Khushbir erased her own national record in the 20km event, clocking 1:31:40, to finish 35th. Khushbir’s previous record of 1:33:37 was set at the Asian Race Walking Championship in Nomi City, Japan in March.

Of the other Indians in the fray, Manish Singh and Surinder Singh came up with their personal best efforts of 4:02:08s and 4:09:17s while finishing 32nd and 37th, respectively. Maniram Patel clocked 4:17:03s to end the race at 43rd.

The four-member Indian team finished seventh in combined rankings.

Sixty walkers took part in the men’s event and 48 finished the race that was won by 2013 Moscow World Championships silver medallist Mikhail Ryzhov of Russia in a world leading time of 3:39:05s.

Another Russian, Ivan Noskov, was second in 3:39:38s while London Olympics silver medallist Jared Tallent of Australia was third in 3:42:48s.

Australia didn’t have the required three walkers to have a say in the race for team honours.

The women’s 20km race was won by Anisya Kirdyapkina of Russia in 1:26:31, followed by Hong Liu of China (1:26:58) and  Elmira Alembekova (Rusia, 1:27:02).