India on Sunday selected a 19-member squad for the World Athletics Championships, which will take place in Tokyo from September 13 to 21 and be led by star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra.
With two-time Olympic medallist Chopra, Sachin Yadav, Yashvir Singh, and Rohit Yadav also making the cut, India will have four men’s javelin throwers in the showcase for the first time in its history.
Four Indians qualified in the last edition as well, but Rohit had to withdraw because of an injury.
The squad, which includes five women athletes, was finalised by the senior selection committee of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI).
In the previous event, which took place in Hungary in 2023, India had sent 28 athletes, including seven relay racers. The country did not qualify for any relay events this time.
No other Indian has a genuine chance to place on the podium this time around, unlike Chopra, who took home the gold in Budapest in 2023.
While heptathlete Nandini Agasara, who also made the cut since he was the Asian champion, is still recovering from an elbow ailment, men’s 20-kilometer race walker Akshdeep Singh was not selected despite qualifying through the world ranking because he is not medically fit.
Avinash Sable, the top 3000m steeplechaser, qualified by the automatic qualification threshold, but he will not be able to compete because he had ACL surgery in July.
“Sable, Akshdeep and Nandini are not in the team as they are not medically fit,” AFI spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla said at a virtual media interaction.
Being the reigning champion allowed the 27-year-old Chopra to enter the World Championships as a wild card, which in turn allowed three other Indians to join him.
A maximum of three athletes per nation are permitted to compete in each event; however, if one athlete qualifies as a wild card entry, the total number of competitors may reach four.
While the other three Indians qualified based on global rankings, Chopra also failed to meet the 85.50-meter direct qualification threshold.
Following the withdrawal of competitors higher in the world rankings, Rohit, who was not originally in the 36-athlete bracket to compete in Tokyo, received an invitation from World Athletics.
If an athlete breaks the qualifying mark, they are automatically eligible to compete in the World Championships. The world ranking quota is used to distribute the remaining spots in order to reach the minimum number of entries needed for each event, which is set by World Athletics.
After that, member nations notified the international organization of any athletes who had withdrawn even though they had made the cut, and the next-ranked athletes took the open spots.
For the majority of events, the qualifying deadline was August 24.
The Indian squad:
Men: Neeraj Chopra, Sachin Yadav, Yashvir Singh and Rohit Yadav (javelin), Murali Sreeshankar (long jump), Gulveer Singh (5,000m and 10,000m), Praveen Chithravel and Abdulla Aboobacker (triple jump), Sarvesh Anil Kushare (high jump), Animesh Kujur (200m), Tejas Shirse (110m hurdles), Servin Sebastian (20km race walk), Ram Baboo and Sandeep Kumar (35km race walk)
Women: Parul Chaudhary and Ankita Dhyani (3000m steeplechase), Annu Rani (javelin), Priyanka Goswami (35km race walk), Pooja (800m and 1500m)
