Men's 4x400m relay: India creates Asian record but fails to qualify for final

The Indian men's 4x400m relay team created a new Asian record but that was not enough for the quartet to qualify for the final at the Tokyo Olympics on Friday.

The team comprising Muhammed Anas, Noah Nirmal Tom, Arokia Rajiv and Amoj Jacob finished fourth in the second heat at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium with a timing of 3:00.25.

Italy (2:58.91) and Netherlands (2:59.06), who ran in the first heat, took the slots for the 'fastest losers' combined from both heats to reach the final.

Poland emerged as the winners of the second heat with a timing of 2:58.55. Jamaica finished second with 2:59.29 while Belgium came third with 2:59.37.

Anas clocked a timing of 45.67 in the first leg and moved ahead of South Africa and Colombia. Noah ran 45.06 in the second leg while Rajiv clocked 44.84 in the third leg.

Jacob made an incredible effort in the last leg to move from sixth to finish fourth, but fell short of making the final.


Overall, India were placed ninth behind the eight finalists including the USA (2:57.77), Botswana (2:58.33) and Trinidad & Tobago (2:58.60) from the first heat.

The Indian team bettered Qatar's gold medal timing of 3:00.56 set in the 2018 Asian Games at Jakarta.

The men's relay team was ranked 13th out of the 16 teams to make the cut for the Olympics.

They had achieved a season best timing of 3:01.89 at the Inter-State Athletics meet in Patiala held in the last week of June to improve their ranking.-IANS