Rana creates National record only to finish 36th in 50km race walk

LONDON: India's Basanta Bahadur Rana created a national record but had to settle for a 36th place finish in the men's 50km race walk at the London Olympics on Saturday .
Rana clocked 3:56:48 hrs, bettering his own national record of 4:02:13 hrs which he set in the IAAF Race Walking Cup at Saransk, Russia last May.
Today's race saw 51 finishing out of the 63 starters on the penultimate day of the Games.The rest either did not finish or were disqualified.
With Rana finishing 36th, India's athletics campaign is nearing its end without a medal. Thirteen out of 14 track & field athletes have finished their competitions. Ram Singh Yadav will run the marathon race tomorrow.
Double world champion Sergey Kirdyapkin of Russia won the race in an Olympic record of 3:35:59 while Jared Tallent of Australia collected his second consecutive Olympic silver in 3:36:53. Si Tianfeng of China was third in 3:37:16.
In the 20km race walk held on August 4, three Indians were in the fray but only K T Irfan came up with a creditable performance finishing 10th in national record time of 1:20:21.
The other two, Gurmeet Singh and Baljinder Singh were 33rd and 43rd in 1:20:21 and 1:25:39 respectively.