Kamalpreet Kaur left all astonished when she sent the discus 65.06m far, a National Record in the sport for women. She has now secured a direct qualification to the Tokyo Olympics for herself during the 24th Federation Cup Senior Athletics Championship held at Patiala. She has broken the National Record of Krishna Poonia of 64.76m.
Earlier as well, Kamalpreet Kaur had a couple of 60m+ throws – during the 2018 Inter-Railway Championships in Lucknow (61.04m), the 2019 Federation Cup (60.25m) and now she has qualified for Tokyo Olympics 2020 as the qualification benchmark for Olympics is 65.5m.
The Punjab girl has become 10th Indian in track and field events to directly secure a position at Olympics by qualifying the benchmark set by the World Athletics.
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Kamalpreet Kaur hails from Kabarwala village in Punjab’s Sri Muktsar Sahib district.
Here are some facts that you should know about India’s latest entrant in Tokyo Olympics 2020:
1.) With her 65.06m throw, Kamalpreet Kaur has become India’s first woman to throw a discus at a distance of 65+m. This time she has defeated Asian Games Gold medallist Seema Punia.
2.) Kamalpreet Kaur is an Indian Railway employee and represents the Railways in the National level tournament.
3.) She has started as a shot put player, but she has qualified as a discus thrower in Tokyo Olympics.
4.) During her childhood days she wanted to become a professional cricketer but looking at her physique her physical education teacher at school asked her to try out shot put before an inter-school competition.
5.) She switched to discus throw in the year 2014 and worked hard during the Covid-19 lockdown to keep her Olympics dream alive.
6.) She was U-18 and U-20 National Champion in the year 2016.
7.) She still wants to build her career in cricket and has said that cricket is her passion and she wanted to perform well in that too.