Brasilia, Apr 12 (PTI) Priyanka Goswami led the Indian women’s marathon team to a creditable fifth place finish at the World Athletics Race Walking Championships here on Sunday.
Goswami finished 10th with a time of 3 hours 43 minutes and one second, while Payal (3:59:50) was 26th and Manju Rani (4:05:22) was 30th in the gruelling women’s marathon race walk event.
After taking into account the performances of the top three finishers of each country, India was placed in fifth slot.
Ecuador’s Paula Torres won the women’s individual marathon race to lead her team to the title.
Italy finished second while hosts Brazil and China were third and fourth respectively.
In the men’s marathon race walk event, India fielded only two competitors — Ram Baboo and Sandeep Kumar — and thus did not figure in the team rankings.
Ram Baboo finished 17th with a time of 3:13:55 while Sandeep Kumar was 20th with 3:15:41.
Japan comfortably secured top spot in the men’s marathon team standings, with Hayato Katsuki delivering a commanding performance to win the individual race.
The two other Japanese athletes, Kazuya Iwai and Subaru Ishida finished third and ninth respectively in the individual race.
Italy and Spain, winners of the team title in 2024, claimed the silver and bronze respectively.
In addition to competing as individuals, athletes also represent their nation, chasing team titles across the events.
Each nation enters a small group of walkers in a race. In senior competitions, a team can include up to five athletes, but only the top three finishers actually count towards the team score.
To be eligible for the team result, a country must have three finishers to make up a scoring team. If they do not, those athletes still count in the individual race, but the team is effectively out of contention.
The team score is the sum of the finishing positions of the three scoring athletes. PTI PDS PDS UNG
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.