Ahead of Neeraj Chopra event, India’s Annu Rani qualifies for women’s javelin final at World Athletics Championships 2022

The whole of India is waiting for Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra to take the field at the World Athletics Championships 2022 – hoping to become just the second Indian after Anju Bobby George in this tournament. But before Neeraj can begin his campaign, there was some good news for the Indian sporting fans as Annu Rani qualified for the final of the women’s javelin event. Annu threw the javelin to a distance of 59.60m to qualify as one of the 12 best performers because only three athletes could cross the automatic qualifying mark of 62.5m.

Japan’s Haruka Kitaguchi produced the best throw of the qualification, hitting the 64.32 mark in her first attempt while China Shiying Liu and Lithuania’s Livia Jasiunaite had the second and third best throws at 63.86m and 63.80m respectively.

Annu Rani entered her second successive final in the World Championships and achieved her best throw in her third attempt. She has a season-best 63.82m, she should certainly make it to the medal round.

Annu Rani into her 2nd consecutive World Finals with overall 8th position in Qualifications pic.twitter.com/gd5YpamdBA — Aditya Narayan Singh (@AdityaNSingh8) July 21, 2022

In 2019, Annu became the first Indian female javelin thrower to sail into the final of the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar. Annu Rani from Western Uttar Pradesh in India has had a good season so far, recording throws in the range of plus 60m. She started her season with a throw of 61.15m at the National Federation Cup Athletics Championships in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Annu Rani will be in action in the final on July 22 (Saturday morning according to IST) in Oregon.