NEW DELHI, Jul 16: A total of 27 members, including nine women, will represent India at the prestigious 2016 IAAF World U-20 Athletics Championships to be held in Bydgoszcz, Poland from July 19 to 24, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) announced today.
The athletes were picked based on their performances while achieving the IAAF qualification mark in different meets, including the 17th Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Vietnam and Federation Cup National Junior Athletics Championships in Bangalore last month.
The Indian team, comprising 18 men and nine women, will be competing in 16 different events in the tournament this year. The selection for the World Championships is based on the qualification standard set by the IAAF for all the events, which includes the individual as well as the relay events.
The team comprises of national record holder Javelin Throw and Neeraj Chopra who has just concluded his training programme in Spala, Poland and will be travelling to Bydgoszcz with his coach.
It also has 2015 Asian Youth 800m champion Beant Singh, 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games 400m silver medallist Jisna Mathew and 800m bronze medallist Abitha Mary Manuel.
The team will be coming to Delhi from a training camp in Patiala and will fly to Poland on July 17.
A total of 1518 athletes (832 men and 686 women) have already registered to take part in the prestigious tournament which looks set to be the second-biggest World U20 Championships to date, bettered only by the 2012 edition in Barcelona, where 1566 athletes participated.
160 IAAF member federations have confirmed their participation in the championship. (PTI)
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