JOIN USIndian quartermilers Nirmala Sheoran, Anu Raghavan and Vijaya Kumari will be joining the ongoing national camp at Jablonec, Czech Republic, this week.
The trio was not the part of the 14-member men and women squad of 400m athletes who had gone for a five-week training at Spala, Poland to prepare for the Asian Games, beginning August 18, in Jakarta-Palembang.
The 400m squad, after the Inter-State meet, moved to the Czech Republic for training and will be making it their base till August 16, before leaving for Jakarta. They will also be participating in a few competitions there.
“We are expecting Nirmala Sheoran, Anu Raghavan and Vijaya Kumari to receive their visas in a day or two. By all means, they should be in Jablonec, which is 108 km from the capital Prague, by this week. To participate in Asiad, they need to be in the national camp. They all had qualified for the Asian Games during the Inter-State meet in Guwahati. Nirmala has already stated personal reasons for missing from the camp previously, while Vijaya was having her B Com exams. She is now ready to join the national camp. She had kept the federation informed where she was training,” an AFI official told DH.
Meanwhile, the 17-member long distance and middle-distance runners, too, have returned to Bhutan where they had been training since May for the Asian Games. The team has been training at Thimpu Track and Field Centre due to the height of the centre and its synthetic track.
“There have been no changes in the group. The team will be training there till August 22 or 23. They will be leaving for Jakarta either from Delhi or Kolkata,” the official said.
The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) had announced a 51-member squad for the Asian Games comprising 23 men and 28 women.