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The Asian Games bronze medallist, Ram Baboo, has breached the Paris 2024 qualification time of 1:20:10 in the men’s 20km race walking. With his personal best time of 1:20:00, Ram Baboo won the bronze medal at the Dudinska 50 Meet in Slovakia, to become the seventh Indian athlete to go past the Olympic qualification mark.
The winner of the Dudinska 50 Meet was Cesar Rodriguez of Peru with a time of 1:19:41, while the silver medalist was Brian Pintado of Egypt, clocking a time of 1:19:44. Apart from Ram Baboo, the six other athletes who have already breached the Paris 2024 qualifying time in the men’s 20km race walking are Servin Sebastian, Pramjeet Bisht, Arshpreet Singh, Suraj Panwar, Vikas Singh, and Akshdeep Singh.
Although India has seven men’s athletes setting the qualifying time for the 20km race walking event in the upcoming Olympic Games, only three can travel to Paris from one country in an individual track and field event. With that, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) will have the inevitable task of picking just three out of seven athletes for Paris 2024.
The Chief Athletics Coach, Radhakrishnan Nair, has stated that the final selection of the athletes for the men’s 20km race walking event could happen in June of this year, just over a month before the Olympics begin in Paris.
Moreover, in the women’s side of the 20km race walking, Priyanka Goswami remains the only walker from India to qualify through to the Olympics. She achieved the feat at the National Open Race Walking Championship last year in the state of Jharkhand in India.
