Qualified at home, Indian athletes fail to make the cut at Olympics

While winning medals in track and field events may still be a tough task, can India's athletes at least match the minimum qualifying times at the real event?

If it wasn’t for three women, Tintu Luka, Sudha Singh and Lalita Babar, India’s track and field athletes would have had an ignominious distinction at the Rio De Janeiro Olympics of 2016; something which the Indian contingent would be keen to avoid at Tokyo.

Luka managed to qualify for the 800 meters race at Rio by beating the required qualifying time 2:01 minutes at an event in the run-up to the Olympics. Both Singh and Babar qualified for the 3000 meters steeplechase similarly. At the actual games at Rio, these were the only athletes who managed to still beat the