Still working on angle and runup for Worlds, Annu Rani claims title amid huge cheers

Time of India

3 hours ago

Annu Rani (Pic credit: Sanjib Das)
BHUBANESWAR:
Annu Rani
is eyeing her fifth appearance at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo next month, and there was no better way to prepare for it than winning the title at the World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze level meet at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Sunday.
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Coming into the tournament having won the title last week at the 8th International Wieslaw Maniak Memorial meet in Szczecin, Poland, with a throw of 62.59m – her first 60m-plus throw in over a year – she was quite confident of delivering and did not disappoint.
She started with 52.74m and then followed it up with throws of 58.65m and 58.39m. But with the crowd cheering her on, she dug deep into her reserves and delivered a throw of 62.01m that helped her finish on top of the leaderboard.
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In the remaining two attempts, she tried hard to hit the automatic World qualifying mark of 64m but fell short. However, she did cross the 60m-mark once again in her fifth attempt with a throw of 61.01m. As for her last throw, it read 59.02m.
Speaking about her performance, she sounded more than pleased and said, 'After travelling back from Poland, there was a lot fatigue but I'm really happy that despite that I was able to cross the 60m-mark twice.'
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Undo
Irrespective of her current showing, the Asian Games gold medallist is well aware that she will need to work on two major areas to better her best performance, which currently stands at 63.82m.
'Whenever I throw the javelin, it's usually at a high angle so I will have to keep it front on. The other area is my runup. I will have to make it fast and smooth,' said Rani, who trained in Europe for about three weeks to better prepare ahead of the Worlds.
While it was a fruitful outing, she sadly didn't have her coach – Sergey Makarov of Russia – by her side because of visa issues. However, she didn't let it affect her and concentrated on her improvement.
However, her coach was here in Bhubaneswar and made sure his pupil gave her best. He kept speaking with her in between the throws and it seemed to make all the difference.
'I was getting a bit aggressive and wasn't concentrating on the throws so he kept telling me to calm down and relax,' added Rani, who had also trained beside German javelin thrower Johannes Vetter for a while.
It was natural for her to get a bit worked up as the packed stadium shouted their lungs out all throughout her event. 'I've never enjoyed competing as much as I did here. At times, I was feeling a bit of pressure but I got a lot of love from all the people and that helped me in the end,' said the 32-year-old.
And this performance has now given her motivation to do even better at the Worlds, where she believes she can make throws of 64m or even 65m.
She, however, is unlikely to compete at the inter-state nationals to get some much-required rest ahead of the big event in Sept. This after all has been quite a hectic season for her.
Besides winning the title in Poland, she also competed at Taiwan Athletics Open and won with a throw of 56.82m. However, she just missed the podium during the Asian Athletics Championships despite throwing 58.30m.
Hopefully, the rest over the next few weeks will now help her to be in prime form ahead of the Tokyo meet.
Catch Rani Rampal's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 4. Watch Here!