Tajinder Pal Singh Toor gears up to achieve Olympics mark

New Delhi, May 19

Asian Games shot put champion Tajinder Pal Singh Toor hopes to achieve the Tokyo Olympics qualification mark of 21.10 metres at next month’s domestic competition in Bengaluru after missing international events due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic disrupted our international competition and exposure plan. We were supposed to travel to Turkey last month but it was postponed as the Turkish government imposed a 15-day quarantine rule on Indians due to rising Covid-19 cases in India,” Toor’s coach Mohinder Singh Dhillon said. “Now our main focus is to crack the Tokyo Olympics qualification standard of 21.10m next month in Bengaluru.”

Dhillon said Toor had missed training after injuring his right hand in October 2020. “We just had two months of good training to prepare for the domestic competition in March. Still we crossed the 20m mark at the Federation Cup Athletics Championships in Patiala,” added the coach.

During the Federation Cup in March, Toor’s season’s best and gold medal-winning performance was 20.58m. “Since then we have done more hard training sessions. We are looking forward to the next domestic competition in June to achieve our goal of qualifying for Tokyo Olympic Games,” said Dhillon. — IANS