2019 World Athletics Championships
2019 World Athletics Championships: Tamil Nadu's Archana Suseendran gets ticket to Doha
The 25-year-old from Madurai has a personal best of 23.18s in 200m
In a latest development, 200m sprinter Archana Suseendran has been confirmed to travel to Doha as part of the Indian contingent for the upcoming International Association of Athletics Federation Athletics (IAAF) World Championship. Slated to start from September 27, the IAAF released a provisional entry list announcing availability of new slots after some of the athletes informed that they won't be participating.
The Athletics Federation of India has accepted a late invite from IAAF to have the 200m runner included. Apart from Archana, there were invites for Hima Das and S Dhanalakshmi as well. The IAAF has a target number of 56 for the 200m and after filling up the slots with athletes who had achieved the qualification standard and with Area champions and wildcards, there were still a number of vacancies. These it offered to athletes based on their position in the performance list during the qualification period.
However, the AFI has only accepted Archana's invitation. Hima was already ruled out of the Worlds due to a back injury. Speaking on the developments, an AFI official was quoted as saying by Sportstar,
"We have accepted the invite of Archana but not of Dhanalakshmi as she did not have consistent good timings. Hima, of course, cannot run as she is injured."
The 25-year-old Archana from Madurai, who has been training under coach M. Riaz in Chennai for nearly six years, clocked a personal best of 23.18s while winning the gold at the Indian Grand Prix in Patiala last month. She also had a personal best — 11.49s — in 100m at the Inter-State Nationals in Lucknow a couple of weeks later.
It has been reliably learnt that Archana, V Revathy and Jisna Mathew will also be undergoing confirmatory trials along with 400m runner Anjali Devi in Delhi on Saturday.
Previously, World University Games 100m champion Dutee Chand was approved by the IAAF for the World Championship on fulfilling the criteria of the required number of competitors for the event.
