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Indian Navy has always been the ocean of opportunities. Like every other organization, it encourage the soldiers to showcase excellence in different fields. Tokyo Olympics 2021 is one of the limelight place where Indian Navy has made a remarkable presence. Three athletes in the Tokyo Olympics are from Indian Navy. So, let’s meet the Indian Navy athletes who made us and Indian navy proud.
Petty Officer Tajinderpal Singh Toor (Men’s Shotput)
In Jun 2021, PT Tajinderpal Singh Toor broke the national and Asian record when he registered a throw of 21.49m with the iron ball. With this, he booked his place in the Tokyo Olympics 2021. During school days, Tajinderpal Singh was involved in cricket, but eventually shifted to shotput.
He came into spotlight when he broke records in 2017 with his best personal throw of 20.40m in the National Athletics Championships in Patiala. He won his first major title with the silver medal in the Asian Athletics Championship in 2017, failing to grab gold by 0.03m with a throw of 19.77m.
After a disappointing 2018 Commonwealth games, Toor punched above his weight to emerge as the Asian Games Champion in 2018, breaking the games and national record with a 20.75m throw. He repeated his Asian glory in the Asian Championships in 2019 by winning yet another Gold medal.
Petty Officer MP Jabir (Men’s 400m Hurdles)
Indian Navy Petty Officer POCOM (Tel) Madari Pillyalil Jabir became the first Indian athletes in 33 years to participate in the 400m Hurdles event in the Olympics. Back in 1988 Seoul Olympics, PT Usha failed to participate in the same event. Jabir was ranked 32nd in the World Rankings, and qualified based on ranking quota where the top 40 in the world would take the prestigious flight to Tokyo Olympics.
At the 2017 Asian Athletics Championship, Jabir made his first major title win with Bronze Medal finish in the 400m Hurdles event with a clock speed of 50.22 seconds. He bettered his numbers to 49.13 seconds to win his second Bronze medal at the Asian Athletics Championships in 2019 as well.
Seaman Muhammad Anas Yahiya (Men’s 4x400m Relay)
​Seaman RP (U/T) Muhammad Anas Yahiya is a part of the Indian quartet in the 4x400m Men’s Relay event at the Tokyo Olympics. Yahiya is teamed up with Amoj Jacob, Arokia Rajiv, Noah Nirmal Tom and Naganathan Pandi for the 4x400m Men’s Relay. The Indian sprinters qualified for the Tokyo Olympics after a superb performance in the Inter-State Athletic Championships in Patiala and get quota on the basis of world rankings.
Yahiya has previously won gold and silver medals in the 4x400m Relay event at the Asian Championships in 2017 and 2019 respectively. He was part of the Silver medal finish in the 4x400m event in the 2018 Asian Games as well.