Ram Baboo and Manju Rani break men’s and women’s 35km race walk national records

RANCHI, Feb 15: Ram Baboo and Manju Rani rewrote the men and women’s 35km national records en route to winning gold medals on the concluding day of the National Race Walking Championships here on Wednesday.
The 23-year-old Manju, representing Punjab, became the first Indian woman to clock sub-3 hour in 35km race walk event, winning in 2:57.54s, as she broke the earlier national record of 3:00.04s set last year by Ramandeep Kaur.Baboo of Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, improved his own national mark of 2:36.34s by nearly five minutes to 2:32.36s.However, they failed to match the World Athletics Championships qualifying standards of 2:29.40s (men) and 2:51.30s (women).The 35km race walk is a very new event introduced in India only in 2021 in the wake of World Athletics’ decision to do away with the 50km event after the Tokyo Olympics. For Manju, it was the first win in five starts since preferring the 35km event in September 2021. Bandana Patel of Uttar Pradesh took the bronze with a personal best time of 3:11.35s. (PTI)