Nirmala Sheron qualifies for Rio in 400 m sprint

Indian quarter-miler Nirmala Sheoran made the cut for next month's Rio Olympics after clocking 51.48 secs in 400m at the National Inter-State Senior Athletics championships on Friday.

•    Nirmala had revealed her Rio ambitions when she improved her previous best by a huge margin clocking 52.35 secs during Friday's 400m heats at GMC Balayogi Stadium.
•    The Haryana quarter-miler today ran the race of her life as she led right from start to finish and recorded a personal best of 51.48 secs, a time that put her on the Rio bus and erased the previous meet mark of 51.73 secs held by M R Poovamma since 2014.
•    Nirmala became the 24th track and field athlete from India to qualify for the Rio Olympics after she surpassed the Olympic qualification mark of 52.20 secs.
•    Saturday's time put Nirmala fourth in the Indian all-time rankings behind Manjeet Kaur (51.04s, 2004), K M Beenamol (51.21s, 2000) and Chitra K Soman (51.30s, 2004).
•    P T Usha's trainee Jisna Mathew (53.14 secs) and Tamil Nadu's P N Souwndharya (53.85s) took the other medals of the day.
•    Chandigarh boy Pankaj Malik romped home in the men's 400m gold in 47.40 secs.