India’s fastest female quarter-miler of the season till date, Aishwarya Mishra, will not race at the upcoming Senior National Federation Cup to be held in Kerala as she is based out of England for advance training camp under the aegis of World champion and Olympic hurdler Dai Greene.
“I’m training in Loughborough for a month-long camp. At the moment I have no plans to compete at the April 21 to 24 Federation Cup to be held in Kochi,” the Uttarakhand National Games champion told Mykhel over the phone from England. “I arrived here in England a fortnight ago and I’m getting used to local weather conditions.”
Maharashtra’s 27 year old Hangzhou Asian Games silver medallist in women’s 4x400m relay had an incredible run earlier in February at the National Games in Dehradun. She clocked 51.12 seconds, a personal and season best, to win the gold medal in the women’s 400m.
But she doesn’t have plans as of now to compete at the first domestic track and field competition of this season that assume significance as it is the main qualification event for next month’s Asian Athletics Championship to be held in Gomi, Korea.
Earlier in March she had also skipped the Indian Open 400m competition in Kerala. “Since my focus is to further improve my personal best in the coming months I decided to attend an advanced coaching camp in England,” Aishwarya added. “I also plan to go for regular international exposure in future and might often have to travel to England for training and competition.”
According to Maharashtra’s international runner, she will focus on an individual race in coming months, which could diminish her chances to be part of the national 4x400m women’s relay team.
The 2023 Asian championships silver medallist in an individual 400m race was also a member of the national 4x400m relay team that won bronze in Bangkok. She was also a member of the 4x400m relay that won silver at the Hangzhou Asian Games held in 2023 in China.
Country’s leading 400m female runners are currently based out of Kerala’s NCOE (National Centre of Excellence) in Trivandrum and training with India’s foreign coach. “Athletes who are training at NCOE in Kerala would be considered for the national relay team and not those who are training outside the NCOE,” Aishwarya said of not focusing on relay this time of the season.
The second edition of National Open Relay Carnival will be held on April 30 in Chandigarh. The season’s first major international relay competition – May 10-11 World Athletics Relays will be held in Guangzhou, China. The Guangzhou competition will be a qualifying relay event for the September 13 to 21 Tokyo World Athletics Championships in Japan.
The automatic qualification standard in the women’s 400m for the Worlds is 50.75 seconds, which is better than the national record of 50.79 seconds. “In all probability I should be running an individual race at the World Championships in Japan,” she added.