Picture Credit: Twitter/@Media_SAI
Amit Khatri clinched the silver medal in the 10,000m race walk with a timing of 42:17.94 at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Nairobi on Saturday. His effort ensured India's second medal at the event after the country bagged a bronze in the 4x400m mixed relay. While Khatri had been leading for a major part of the race walk, he was overtaken by Kenyan walker Heristone Wanyonyi in the last two laps. Wanyonyi finished at 42:10.84 to take the gold while Paul McGrath of Spain took home bronze with a timing of 42:31.11.
Earlier in January, Khatri had continued his happy knack of setting new national records when he claimed the 10000m race walk title at the Junior Federation Cup with relative ease. The 17-year-old had finished in 40 minutes 40.97 seconds, improving on the previous national record of 40:37.78 and nearly half a minute ahead of Paramdeep Mor. That also happened to be nearly three minutes quicker than his previous best timing of 43:36.26 coming at the National Youth Championships in 2019.
"Amit wins ?in 10000m Race Walk with a time of 42:17.94 at the #WorldAthleticsU20 in Nairobi This is the 1st time India has won a medal in Race Walking and 2 medals in a single edition of the Championships Many congratulations Champ! #Athletics #IndianSports," Sports Authority of India's Twitter handle posted.
Here is the Tweet:
Meanwhile, India's Baljeet Kaur finished seventh with a personal best of 48:58.17 in the women's 10,000m. While Kaur did manage to take the lead early on but her frequent water breaks saw her ranking slip down, eventually finishing seventh. She did recover well enough to shave off nearly a minute from her earlier personal best of 49:50.71 that she had clocked earlier in the month.
Moreover, the Indian men's 4x400m relay team failed to make it to the final finishing last in the heats. The team had Abdul Razzak, Sumit Chahal, Kapil and Barath Sridhar and they even managed their season's best timing of 3:10:62 but it was not enough to take the quartet to the medal race. Kapil and Barath were also part of the 4x400m mixed relay team that had managed to clinch the bronze earlier in the week.