National-record holder Khushbir Kaur finished at 42nd spot with a below-par performance in the women’s 20km race walk on the final day of the World Championships here on Sunday.
The 24-year-old Punjab athlete clocked 1 hour 36 minutes and 41 seconds, more than two minutes outside her season’s best of 1:34.1s to finish 42nd out of 52 competitors who finished the race.
The Indian began at a fast pace, but slowed down gradually later on. She was at 15th spot at the 5km mark with a time of 22 minutes, 25 seconds, but by the halfway mark, she had fallen behind to 41st place with a split time of 46 minutes 19 seconds. At the 15km mark, she was 39th with a time of 1:10.55s.
Jiayu Wang of China won the race in 1:26.18s. Maria Gonzalez of Mexico and Antonella Palmisano of Italy took the silver and bronze with efforts of 1:26:19 and 1:26:36 respectively.
This was Khushbir’s third World Championships participation. In the earlier edition in 2015 in Beijing, she had finished 37th with a timing of 1:38:53, while she was 38th in 2013 in Moscow with a time of 1:34:28.
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Khushbir had finished 54th with a timing of 1:40:33.