Indian 4x100 women's relay team break 18-year-old national record in Beijing

Beijing: The Indian 4x100m women’s relay team broke the 18-year-old national record to finish in 4th position at the IAAF World Challenge in Beijing on Wednesday. The 4x100m women relay team comprising Dutee Chand, Srabani Nanda, HM Jyoti and Merlin Joseph clocked 44.03s to finish the race, breaking the 18-year-old record of 44.43s created by the quartet of Saraswati Dey, Rachita Mistry, EB Shyla and PT Usha on 22 July, 1998 in Fukuoka, Japan. [caption id=“attachment_2368178” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File picture of Dutee Chand. PTI[/caption] The Indian team ran with Merlin starting the race with Jyoti running the second followed by the Srabani with Dutee running the anchor leg. The host nation grabbed the first and third positions with China A and China B team on the first and third position respectively while Japan finished second. China A team clocked 42.65 for the gold medal while Japan team finished the race in 43.81 for the silver medal and China B team finished third for the bronze medal by clocking 43.89. The team will be now flying to Taiwan for their next challenge tomorrow early morning at the Taiwan Open Athletics Championships 2016. Meanwhile, Dutee Chand did not run the individual 100m sprint event though her name was in the start list. The organisers entered her name as reserved runner on the condition that she will run if somebody withdraws from the race, it is learnt.