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Race walkers Khushbir Kaur, Manish Rawat, Sandeep Kumar qualify for Rio Olympics
Three Indian race walkers - Khushbir Kaur, Manish Rawat and Sandeep Kumar - qualified for next year's Rio Olympics after creditable performances in the IAAF Race Walking Challenge at Rio Maior in Portugal.
Three Indian race walkers - Khushbir Kaur, Manish Rawat and Sandeep Kumar - qualified for next year's Rio Olympics after creditable performances in the IAAF Race Walking Challenge at Rio Maior in Portugal.
National women's 20km walk record holder Khushbir was in the news recently, with the Punjab government finally allotting an apartment to her family after HT had reported about the deplorable conditions they were being forced to live in.
Despite all her personal travails back home, Khushbir clocked 1:33:58, better than the Rio 2016 qualification time of 1:35, though she finished 13th in the race.
In the men's 20km race walk, Manish Rawat logged a personal best performance to finish in the top 10 with a timing of 1:22:50, well above Rio Games qualification time of 1:24.
National 50km race walk record holder Sandeep Kumar also qualified for the Rio Games with a 14th-place finish in 1:23:32 though he received one warning.
The third walker in the men's 20km race walk, Devender Singh missed out on the qualification with an 18th place finish in 1:24:57. The fourth 4th walker Ganpathy Krishnan finished on 29th place with 1:27:05.
India's race walk squad were training in Rio Maior, Portugal, with the primary objective of Rio 2016 Olympic Games qualification. They took part in the IAAF Race Walking Challenge, also called Rio Maior Race Walking International Grand Prix.
