Six Indian athletes will take part in the Asian 20km Race Walking Championship to be held in Nomi, Japan on March 16.
Gurmeet Singh, K T Irfan, K Ganapathi, Devender and Basant Bahadur Rana will represent the country in the men's race event while Khusbir Kaur will take part in the women's section.
The five men race walkers were the top-five finishers in the National 20km Race Walking Championships held in Kochi last month while Khusbir had won the women's race.
Gurmeet had won a silver and a bronze in the last two editions of the championships.
Alexander Artsybashev will accompany the Indian team as coach. The squad will leave for Japan tonight.
The Asian Athletics Association has said that it would conduct pre-competition blood testing in collaboration with the IAAF. This will be the first championships to carry out blood testing by AAA.
The Indians, taking part in the championships, could become the first among the country's track and field athletes to undergo blood testing.
Blood testing will be conducted on the day before the race. Appointed athletes will be notified in advance so that the athletes concerned can report to the doping control station as per instruction.
A failure to undergo doping control test, following the notification, will result in anti-doping rule violation under the IAAF rules, the AAA said in a statement.
