Sandeep Kumar wins back-to-back titles, disappointing day for Priyanka Goswami at Indian Open Race Walking Championships

Olympian Sandeep Kumar successfully defended his men’s 20km title at the ninth Indian Open Race Walking Championships in Ranchi on Saturday. But it was a disappointing day for India’s star athlete Priyanka Goswami in the women’s 20km event as she quit the race due to mental and physical exhaustion.

“I was feeling tired," Priyanka told Sportskeeda over the phone from Ranchi. "It was more of a mental fatigue than physical. I made an effort but it was difficult to carry on. So, I quit the race before the 5km mark of the competition."

With Saturday’s win, Kumar has established himself as the No. 1 race walker in the senior group. Not only that, his gold-winning time of 1::22:05 was even better than the Birmingham Commonwealth Games qualification mark of 1::22:20. The Asian Games qualification time, meanwhile, is 1::20.00.

The Haryana race walker expressed his satisfaction at achieving Commonwealth Games qualification time.

“I’ve enough time to further improve my performance,” Kumar said in a post-race interaction over the phone from Ranchi.

As expected, it was a start-to-end domination by Kumar, but there was intense competition for silver and bronze medals. Punjab’s Akshdeep Singh won a battle of wits against World U20 silver medalist Amit Khatri to take home silver with a time of 1::23:14. Paramjeet Singh Bisht of Uttarakhand won bronze with a time of 1::23:27. Khatri of Haryana finished fourth after clocking 1::23:42.

Suraj Panwar, another youngster in the group, initially finished second but was imposed a two-minute penalty for loss of contact with the ground in the closing stages of the race. He was eventually placed eighth with a time of 1::25:11.

In the absence of Priyanka, the women’s 20km title went to Ravina, who crossed the finish line in 1::31:51. Tokyo Olympian Bhawana Jat finished second after clocking 1::32:30. Sonal Sukhwal was third with a time of 1::32:39.

The senior men and women’s 35km race will be conducted on Sunday.