Indian Sprinter Hima Das is unlikely to miss out on the Tokyo Olympics due to a hamstring injury while running 100m heats at the National Inter-State Athletics Championships in Patiala. In the event, she finished third with a timing of 12.01s, well outside the Tokyo qualification time of 11.15s.
The injury pulled the 21 one-year-old out of the 100m finals and also from the 4x100m women’s relay, keeping away all her Tokyo Olympics hopes.
In Hima Das absence, the relay team of Dutee Chand, AK Daneshwari, Archana Suseendran and Dhanalakshmi Sekar too failed to breach the qualification mark despite winning the gold medal in the event. The quartet needed to complete its run in 43.03s or less to break into the top 16 of World Athletics’ race to Tokyo rankings and qualify for the July Summer Games. The team could only manage 44.15s.
However, with no individual quotas under her belt along with the women’s 4x100m relay team failing to make the Tokyo cut, Hima Das made a desperate final attempt to qualify for Tokyo during the 200m finals at the Inter-State meet. Despite having her hamstring injury, Hima Das could only manage a 25.03s, well short of the automatic qualification mark of 22.80s.
Her injury proved detrimental as she ran her 200m personal best of 22.88s at the Indian Grand Prix 4 on June 21, missing out on a Tokyo spot by just 0.08s.
Being the current national record holder in women’s 400m, Hima came to the limelight after winning 400m gold in the World Junior Championship in Finland in 2018. Besides winning an individual 400m silver, she was also a part of gold-winning women’s 4x400m relay and mixed 4x400m relay teams in the 2018 Asian Games.
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