Indian Women's 4x100m relay team break 18 year old national record at Beijing

The Indian 4x100m women’s relay team broke the 18-year-old National record to finish in 4th position at the IAAF World Challenge at Beijing today.

The 4x100m women relay team comprising Dutee Chand, Srabani Nanda, HM Jyoti and Merlin Joseph clocked 44.03s to finish the race, breaking the 18-year-old record of 44.43s created by the quartet of Saraswati Dey, Rachita Mistry, EB Shyla and PT Usha on July 22, 1998 in Fukuoka, Japan.

The Indian team ran with Merlin starting the race with Jyoti running the second followed by the Srabani with Dutee running the anchor leg. The host nation grabbed the first and third positions with China A and China B team on the first and third position respectively while Japan finished second.

China A team clocked 42.65 for the gold medal while Japan team finished the race in 43.81 for the silver medal and China B team finished third for the bronze medal by clocking 43.89. The team will be now flying to Taiwan for their next challenge tomorrow early morning at the Taiwan Open Athletics Championships 2016.

Talking about the 4 athletes who made the Country proud, Dutee Chand, is a national champion in the under-18 category when she clocked 11.8 seconds in the 100 meters event. Her success at Asian Championships in Pune led her to become the first Indian to reach the final of a global athletics 100 meters final, when she reached the final in the 2013 World Youth Championships and she also made it to the National Senior Athletics Championships in Ranchi.

Also read : 14-year-old Tanisha Kashyap becomes the first Assamese girl to represent India at Wimbledon

Srabani Nanda has been a been a repeated champion at the Common wealth games. She won the girls 4×100 metre relay gold in the 2008 at Pune and helped India win a bronze medal in women’s 4×100 metre relay event of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. She also went onto secure a gold medal and silver medal in 200 and 100 metre sprint respectively at the 2016 South Asian Games in Assam.

27-year-old HM Jyothi who hails from from Hiriyur village in Chitradurga is peaking at the right time as Indian athletes look for an impressive medal haul in Glasgow and then at the Asian Games in Incheon.