27 athletes to represent India at Polish U20 Championships

Twenty-seven athletes will represent India at the 2016 IAAF World U20 Athletics Championships to be held in Bydgoszcz, Poland from July 19-24, the Athletics Federation of India announced here on Saturday.

The athletes qualified to compete on the world stage had achieved the IAAF qualification mark in different meets including the 17th Asian Junior Athletics Championships held at Vietnam in June and Federation Cup National Junior Athletics Championships held at Bangalore in May.

The Indian team, comprising of 18 men and 9 women, will be competing in 16 different events. The selection for the World Championships is based on the qualification standard set by the IAAF for all the events, which includes the individual as well as the relay events.

The team comprises of National record holder in Javelin Throw, Neeraj Chopra, 2015 Asian Youth 800m Champion Beant Singh, 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games 400m Silver medalist Jisna Mathew and 800m bronze medalist Abitha Mary Manuel.

The team will be coming to Delhi from their training camp in Patiala and will fly to Poland early morning on July 17. A part of team, camping at P.T. Usha school will also be reaching Delhi from Calicut to join the team.

The IAAF World U20 Championships Bydgoszcz 2016, are on course to become one of the biggest gatherings of athletes in the history of the championships.

With the deadline for the final entries now closed, a total of 1518 athletes (832 men and 686 women) have been entered. It looks set to be the second-biggest World U20 Championships to date, bettered only by the 2012 edition in Barcelona, where 1566 athletes participated.