Renjith, Dharambir, Jinson join Rio-bound Indian contingent

Triple jumper Renjith Maheswary, sprinter Dharambir Singh and middle distance runner Jinson Johnson seized the opportunity on the last day of qualification in order to secure their berths for next month's Rio Olympics at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium during the fourth leg of the Indian Grand Prix here on Monday.

Triple jumper Renjith, who will be featuring in his third Olympic voyage in Rio, was trying to qualify for the global spectacle since last year. He had failed to make the grade in the inter-state championships at Hyderabad ten days ago despite registering a season best 16.56m.

However his third round jump of 16.93m did the trick on Monday. Having achieved the qualification Renjith then made a big leap of 17.30m (+1.8 m/s) that not only regained his national record back but also placed him third in the current world rankings for the event behind Americans Christian Taylor (17.76) and Will Claye (17.65).

Haryana sprinter Dharambir clocked an impressive 20.45 secs (+1.0 m/s) in 200m that not only improved his own national mark of 20.66 secs set during the Asian championships at Wuhan last year, but also earned him a berth on the Rio-bound team.

The last Indian sprinter to run 200m was Tamil Nadu's Perumal Subramaniam in 1980 at Moscow Olympics.

Half-miler Johnson's effort should be ranked as the performance of the day as he virtually ran a solo race to dip within the Rio qualifying norm of 1:46.00 in men's 800m. Having missed the mark in Hyderabad ten days with mere 0.43 secs, Jinson produced a superlative performance to clock a memorable 1:45.98.

Jinson's time was the second best ever by an Indian at this distance after Sri Ram Singh's marvelous 1:45.77 seventh place finish in Montreal Olympics forty years ago.