Vijayakumari, Siddarth missing from official list

BENGALURU: It’s official now. The Indian 4x400m women’s relay squad will be without Federation Cup 400m silver medal winner

GK Vijayakumari

. The youngster, who is doing her graduation here, had upset some of the big names to climb the podium in Patiala but that was not enough as the

Athletics Federation of India

kept her out for not giving a written undertaking that she will be part of the national camp in Patiala for the next two years leaving her studies.


According to sources, the official entry list released by the

Gold Coast

organizers doesn’t contain the name of Vijayakumari who had clocked her personal best time of 53.03s in Patiala. The Indian squad features only four athletes - Hima Das (51.97s), MR Poovamma (53.38), Soniya Baishya (53.44) and

Saritaben Gayakwad

(53.87). While Assam’s Hima won the 400m race, Poovamma finished third, Soniya came fourth and Saritaben sixth. As per the entry list, the

AFI

has not even added any reserve athletes though they could have added two more. Of the nine competing nations, only India and Sierra Leone have entered four-member relay squads.

Two other promising athletes - long jumper M Sreeshankar and high jumper Siddharth Yadav - also missed out as AFI failed to grab last-minute entries after omitting them from the initial long list, which ironically could have had any number of athletes.