Punjab’s Kamalpreet makes Olympics cut

Karam Prakash
Tribune News Service
Patiala, March 19

Punjab discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur booked her ticket for the Tokyo Olympics with a new national record on the final day of the Federation Cup National Athletics here today.

With a throw of 65.06, Kamalpreet became the first woman discus thrower from India to breach the 65m mark.

Veteran Seema Punia finished second with a throw of 62.64m while Sonal Goyal took the bronze medal with a best effort of 52.11m. This was Seema’s first event after the 2018 Asian Games, where she won a bronze.

Making a comeback after almost two years, Kamalpreet made the gold-medal winning throw of 65.06m with her first attempt itself, smashing the nine-year-old national record of 64.76m, which was held by Krishna Poonia.

Kamalpreet, however, said that she was a bit nervous before the event, else her performance could have been better.

“I couldn’t sleep for almost three days because the competition was very important for me,” she told The Tribune. “I tried meditation and watched videos to get a good sleep, but none helped.”

“I had never expected that I will be able to throw above 65m. In practice also, I was throwing the discuss around 62m only. The competition feel might have helped me to do what I did,” she added.

Kamalpreet, employed with the Diesel Loco Modernization Works (DMW) here, said she would continue her training at the DMW ground under the guidance of her coach, Baljeet Singh.

“My focus would be to bring a medal from Tokyo Olympics,” she said.

Gold for Hima

Hima Das won the women’s 200m race with a new meet record of 23.21 seconds, taking revenge for her semifinals heat defeat to S Dhanalakshmi of Tamil Nadu. Dhanalakshmi won silver in 23.39s, while Archana Suseendran took bronze in of 23.60s.

Hima, who has a personal best time of 23.10s in the event, is yet to qualify for the Olympics, for which the qualifying mark is 22.80.