International Association of Athletics Federations rules out race for PU Chitra

KOZHIKODE: The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rejected the Athletics Federation of India’s (AFI) request to include P.U. Chithra in the Indian squad for the World Championships on Sunday. IAAF said the request by the AFI could not be entertained as the official entry deadline had passed. The AFI on Saturday had requested the IAAF to consider Chithra’s case after sports minister Vijay Goel asked the national federation to honour the Kerala HC order. “The athlete P.U. Chithra could not be accepted as the AFI entered the athlete after the official entry deadline had passed. At 23:59hrs Monaco time on Monday July 24 when entries closed, the women’s 1500m was full and so no late entries could be considered,” the statement from IAAF read.

Meanwhile, athletes who performed worse than Chitra were given entry by the IAAF in the 1,500m race. Tamara Armoush, a Jordanian who finished fifth in the Asian Athletic Championship, was in the IAAF 1,500 m race list while Asian champion Chithra was denied chance by AFI. The personal best of Tamara, a British-origin athlete, is 4:18.25 while Chitra clocked 4:17.92 to win the gold medal in the Asian championship held in Bhubaneswar. The AFI cited Chithra’s “poor timing” at the meet as a reason to axe her from the team. Another reason AFI gave for the exclusion of PU Chithra was that her timing was not close to qualification mark stipulated by the IAAF. However, according to the entry list IAAF has admitted two athletes, who had worse timing than Chithra for the world athletic championship. AFI secretary C.K. Valson did not respond to phone calls for a comment on the story.

While  athletic associations of other countries batted for their athletes to find a place in the world championship, AFI turned a blind eye to its own athlete by denying a sure chance to compete in the world championship. “To safeguard the universality of the sport, all member federations without a qualified athlete are allowed to enter an unqualified athlete in the World Championships. Jordan having no athlete with a qualification standard in entered Armoush Tamara in the women’s 1500m as their sole representative in the championships. She was entered on time before the close of entries,” responded IAAF.

“Two athletes who have not had better timing than Chithra would be participating in the meet and one of them finished fifth in the meet in which Chitra won gold medal. This shows that AFI could have easily included Chitra’s name in the list as IAAF would not have rejected her name. This shows how much AFI wanted Chitra to participate in the meet,” said MS Sijin, Chitra’s coach. IAAF has also given entry to another athlete Eliane Saholinirina, from Madagascar, who clocked 4:28.13 as her seasonal best.