K T Irfan becomes first Indian from athletics to qualify for Tokyo Olympics

National record holder KT Irfan on Sunday, March 17 became first Indian from athletics to qualify for next year's Olympics while finishing fourth in 20 km event of  Asian Race Walking Championships in mi, Japan.

29-year-old Irfan clocked 1 hour 20 minutes and 57 seconds to better Tokyo Olympics qualification standard of 1 hour 21 minutes.

 Olympics qualification period for race walk events and marathon race has begun from January 1 this year and will run till May 31, 2020.  Olympics qualification period for all or athletics events will start from May 1 this year and will run till June 29, 2020.

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or Indian from athletics has so far qualified for Tokyo Olympics.

Irfan, who has a personal best as well as a national record of 1:20:21 which he did during his 10th place finish in 2012 Olympics, also qualified for this year's World Championships (September 27-October 6) in Doha, Qatar as he bettered qualifying mark of 1:22:30.

 Kerala race walker h won 20 km event in National Open Race Walk Championships in Chennai last month with a time of 1:26:18.

He was one of two Indian athletes who was expelled from 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games for t hering to ' needle policy' of Games. He was disqualified in 20 km race walk event of  2018 Asian Games after receiving his third warning for "loss of contact". 

Japan's Toshikazu Yamanishi won 20 km race walk event with an impressive time of 1:17:15 while Kazakhstan's Georgiy Sheiko and Korea's Byeongkwang Choe were second and third in 1:20:21 and 1:20:40 respectively.

Asian and World record in men's 20 km race walk stands in name of Japanese Yusuke Suzuki who clocked 1:16:36 in 2015 edition of same championships in mi.

Two or Indians, Devinder Singh and Ganapathi Krishnan also qualified for World Championships as y clocked 1:21:22 and 1:22:12 respectively. y h finished second and fifth in Chennai National Race Walk Championships with timings of 1:26:19 and 1:26:43.

In women's 20 km race walk event, Soumya Baby finished fourth with a timing of 1:36:08, well outside Olympics qualifying standard of 1:31:00 and World Championships qualifying standard of 1:33:30.