Unknown Railways TTE Bhawana walks into Tokyo Olympics

Ranchi, February 15

Unheralded race-walker Bhawana Jat qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 20km event after pulling off a shock win with a national record at the National Championships. The 23-year-old, who hails from Kabra village in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district, clocked 1hr 29min 54sec, well inside the Olympics qualification mark of 1:31:00, to win the gold.

Bhawana, the daughter of a farmer, made a massive improvement of more than eight minutes on her previous personal best of 1:38.30, set in October last year during the National Open Championships. The earlier national record of 1:31:29 stood in the name of Delhi’s Baby Soumya, set during the National Race Walk Championships in New Delhi in 2018. Bhawana had clocked 1:36:17 in the 20,000m race walk event during the All India Inter-Railway Athletics Championships in Pune last August.

‘Was confident’

“It’s a dream come true. I was doing in the range of 1:27:00 during training, so I knew that if the conditions are all right, I would be able to breach the Olympics qualifying mark of 1:31:00,” Bhawana, posted in Kolkata as a Train Ticket Examiner in the Indian Railways, said.

“It was due to pure hard work in the last few months with my coach that I am being able to come up with this kind of performance,” added Bhawana, who trains on the road around the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur. Bhawana’s next competition will be the Asian Race Walk Championships in Japan on March 15. Priyanka Goswami narrowly missed the Olympics cut after she timed 1:31.36 to win the silver in the 17-athlete field.

Bhawana has provided a sample for dope testing, which means that her national record will be valid. An AFI official said National Anti-Doping Agency has collected the dope samples from the event.

In the men’s 20km event, Sandeep Kumar of Services won the gold in 1:21:34. He narrowly missed the Tokyo Olympics qualification mark of 1:21:00. — PTI

No international event

Bhawana, who trains on her own in Jaipur with her coach Gurmukh Sihag, has not taken part in any international event at the junior or senior level. She has never been in the national camp under the Athletics Federation of India. She began her senior career in 2016 at the National Inter-State Championships in Hyderabad, where she finished fifth in 1:52:38. Saturday’s win was only her second such achievement in a national meet after the National Open in Ranchi last year.

In Race

KT Irfan (20km race walk), Avinash Sable (3000m steeplechase), mixed 4x400m relay team and Neeraj Chopra (javelin) have already qualified for the Olympics