By Shreyashi Sanyal
It looks like Dutee Chand can’t stop being amazing. Chand’s 4×100 relay team, along with Srabani Nanda, HM Jyothi and Merlyn Joseph broke an 18-year-old national record at the IAAF World Challenge in Beijing on Wednesday. The previous record was at 44.43 seconds, which was smashed by Chand’s team who clocked in at 44.03 seconds. The earlier record had been set by PT Usha, Saraswati Dey, Rachita Mistry and EB Shyla during the Asian Championship at Fukuoka, way back in 1998.
Chand and her team came in fourth, with the home country teams China A and China B taking the gold and bronze, and Japan taking the silver. Although the Indian relay team has come way ahead of last year’s season best of 44.92 seconds, the team will have to run in the range of 43.45 seconds or faster to be able to finish in the top-16 in the world, so that they can qualify for the Olympic Games. The team is hoping to do this at the Taiwan Open Athletics Championships. Right now, France holds the sixteenth position.
This is more awesomeness from Dutee Chand, who recently broke Rachita Mistry’s national record to become India’s fastest female 100m sprinter at the Federation Cup National Athletics Championships in Delhi.
But Chand has been struggling with her journey to Rio. After missing the Olympic qualification standard of 11.32 seconds by one-hundredth of a second in Delhi, Chand was hoping to qualify for the Rio Olympics at the 100 m event in Beijing, but was told to withdraw at the last moment as she was walking towards the tracks. After that unsettling experience, her next shot was at the Taiwan Open Athletic Championships, where she won the gold with an 11.50 second sprint. It fell short of the Olympic mark, but there’s still hope. Chand has three more shots at Rio, one in Kazakhstan, one in Kyrgyzstan, and the National Inter-State Championships in Hyderabad, all of which are happening next month. Here’s wishing her some Rio luck!