Jyoti Gawate and Nitendra Singh Rawat secured top honours at the 2022 edition of the Ageas Federal Life Insurance New Delhi Marathon held on March 27.

Nitendra completed the men’s marathon in two hours, 16 minutes and four seconds. Jyoti, an elite runner from Maharashtra, covered the distance in 3:01:19 to win the women’s race.

The event was an opportunity for athletes to qualify for the year’s Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.

The marathon-qualifying time for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) to be held in July-August 2022 in Birmingham is 2:18:40 for men and 2:38:19 for women. The same for the Asian Games to be held in Hangzhou, China in September 2022, is 2:18:48 for men and 2:39:28 for women.

Anish Thapar Magar got the second position in the men’s race, finishing 36 seconds behind Nitendra with a timing of 2:16:40. In third position was Anil Kumar Singh (2:16:46). In the men’s marathon, finishers up to the fourth, fifth and sixth place – Ashish Kumar (2:17:03), Belliappa A.B. (2:17:08) and Kalidas Laxman Hirave (2:18:12) – joined the podium finishers in the list of those qualified for the CWG and the Asian Games.

Among women who ran the marathon in New Delhi, ultramarathoner Nupur Singh, who recently got a podium finish at a trail ultramarathon event in Saudi Arabia (you can read about it here: https://shyamgopan.com/2022/03/23/nupur-singh-secures-a-podium-finish-in-trail-ultramarathon-in-saudi-arabia/), finished second with a timing of 3:16:01. In third position was Disket Dolma, runner from Ladakh, who finished in 3:22:04.

(The author, Latha Venkatraman, is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.)