Sandeep Kumar and Khushbir Kaur set two national records by producing creditable show in the Men's 50km event and Women's 20km event, respectively, on the first day of the IAAF World Race Walking Cup at Taicang, China today.
Sandeep finished 23rd in his event, clocking 3:56:22s to better Basanta Bahadur Rana's earlier national record timing of 3:56:48s set during the 2012 the London Olympics. Sandeep had a personal best of 4:02:19s before this effort.
Later, India's woman walking star Khushbir erased her own national record in the 20km event, clocking 1:31:40, to finish 35th in the ongoing competition. Khushbir's previous record of 1:33:37 was set only recently at the Asian Race Walking Championship in Nomi, Japan in March.
The other Indians in the fray also did well with Manish Singh and Surinder Singh coming up with their personal best efforts of 4:02:08s and 4:09:17s while finishing 32nd and 37th, respectively.
Maniram Patel clocked 4:17:03s to end the race at 43rd.
The four-member Indian team finished seventh in combined rankings and just missed out on getting prize money for their efforts. The top six in individual and team rankings get prize money.
Sixty walkers took part in the event and 48 finished the race that was won by 2013 Moscow World Championships silver medallist Mikhail Ryzhov of Russia in world leading time of 3:39:05s.
Another Russian, Ivan Noskov, was second in 3:39:38s while London Olympics silver medallist Jared Tallent of Australia was third in 3:42:48s.
