Despite setting a new national record, the Indian mixed 4x400m relays team on Monday missed the Paris Olympics qualification mark enroute their gold-winning run at the inaugural Asian Relay Championships in Bangkok, Thailand. (More Sports News)
The Indian quartet of Muhammed Ajmal, Jyothika Sri Dandi, Amoj Jacob and Subha Venkatesan finished the race in 3 minutes 14.12 seconds to clinch the gold.
The quartet broke the earlier national record by around 22 seconds.
The now broken national record of 3:14.34 was clocked by the Indian team while winning the silver medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games last year.
India dominated the race from the beginning and led in all four quarters of the relays.
Sri Lanka bagged silver with a second-place finish clocking 3:17.00 while Vietnam won bronze with a timing of 3:18.45.
However, the gold-winning run from the Indian quartet was not good enough to book a ticket for the Paris Olympics.
India which clocked 3:14.12 had to better Italy's 3:13.56 to get to the 16th spot in the road to Paris list and stake a claim on qualification for the summer games.
16 mixed 4x400m teams will compete at Paris Olympics and 14 of them have already automatically gotten a place in the prestigious summer games during the World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas which took place earlier this month.
The last two spots are to be filled on the basis of best timings of countries till the qualification deadline of June 30.
As of now, Czech Republic (3:11.98) and Italy (3:13.56) have the 15th and 16th best timings and thus are better-placed to grab the tickets to Paris.
Indian men's and women's 4x400m teams seccured Paris Olympics qualification at the World Relays in Bahamas earlier this month. The mixed team consisting of Rajesh Ramesh, Rupal Chaudhary, Avinash Krishna Kumar and Jyothika Sri Dandi had a tough time in Bahamas and could not qualify.
