Murali Sreeshankar. (Twitter Image)
The 24-year-old long jumper secured his place at the Paris Olympics with an effort of 8.37m, which bagged him the silver medal at the continental Championships in Bangkok on Saturday.
Indian long jumper Murali Sreeshankar qualifies for the 2024 Olympics after winning silver in Asian Athletics Championships with an 8.37m effort.
Sreeshankar came in second behind Yu Tang Lin of Chinese Taipei, who registered a jump of 8.40m on Saturday.
The qualification mark for the Paris Games is 8.27m and the qualification period began on July 1.
Sreeshankar has already qualified for the Budapest World Championships in August with his career-best and world-second-ranked jump of 8.41m during the qualification round of the National Inter-State Championships last month.
Earlier, Santhosh Kumar won the bronze medal in men’s 400m hurdles with a personal best time of 49.09 seconds on the fourth and penultimate day of competitions.
Santhosh clocked the fastest time by an Indian in men’s 400m hurdles this year when he finished behind gold medal winner Mohammed Hemeida Bassem (48.64 seconds) of Qatar and Yusaku Kodama (48.96) of Japan.
The 25-year-old’s previous best was 49.49 which he had clocked last year.
Another Indian Yashas Palaksha had also qualified for the final but he did not take part.
No Indian has ever won a men’s 400m hurdles gold in Asian Championships. Joseph Abraham’s silver in the 2009 edition was the best performance by an Indian while he also won a bronze in 2007. M P Jabir won a bronze each in the last two editions.
