Federation Cup: Discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur qualifies for Tokyo Olympics

Indian discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur qualified for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics with a 65.06m effort at the ongoing Senior Athletics Federation Cup on Friday.

The 25-year-old crossed the Tokyo Olympics qualification standard of 63.5m at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) in Patiala with that performance.

Competing against Asian Games gold medalist Seema Punia, Kaur hurled the discus to a distance of 65.06m in her first attempt itself.

Many congratulations to #KamalpreetKaur who achieved qualification for #Tokyo2020 in women's discus throw with a national record attempt of 65.06m. This is also above the Olympic qualification benchmark of 63.5m. #RoadToOlympics #JeetengeOlympics #DiscusThrow #FederationCup pic.twitter.com/8eobFshyPF

— SAIMedia (@Media_SAI) March 19, 2021

By doing so, she smashed Krishna Poonia's existing nine-year-old national record in women's discus throw. Her feat makes Kaur the first Indian woman to breach the 65m-mark in women's discus throw.

Commonwealth Games gold medalist Poonia had created a national record with a throw of 64.76m at the Altius Track Crew Throwdown meet in 2012.

Meanwhile, Seema clinched the silver medal with a 62.64m throw while Sonal Goyal of Delhi finished third after achieving a distance of 52.11m.

Hima wins gold in 200m sprint at the Federation Cup

Hima clocked a blistering 23.21s in the women's 200m sprint final at the Federation Cup.

Star sprinter Hima Das bagged the top honors in the 200m final after clocking 23.21s on Friday. Her timing, however, fell short of the Olympic qualifying standard of 22.80s.

The 2018 world junior 400m champion outpowered 100m sprint gold medalist S. Dhanalakshmi, who came second with a timing of 23.39s. Archana Suseendran of Tamil Nadu won bronze after clocking 23.60s.

Struggling to find form for most of the Federation Cup, Hima produced an unbelievable surge of speed at the final bend to power past her opponents and finish off in style.

On Thursday, Dhanalakshmi clocked 23.26s in the women's 200m sprint semi-finals to smash PT Usha's 23-year-old record set at the 1998 Federation Cup.