Not only did Lalita Babar break the national record on Saturday at the 2016 Rio Olympics but she qualified for the women's 3000m steeplechase final as one of the fastest losers in the Heats, thus becoming the first Indian to reach the final of a track event at the Olympics in 32 years.
Lalita, hailing from Satara district of Maharashtra, finished fourth in the qualifying heat 2 with a new national record time of 9 minutes, 19.76 seconds while the holder of that mark, compatriot Sudha Singh, was eliminated after a poor run in heat 3.
The 27-year-old Lalita, who had won the bronze medal in the event in the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, two years ago, emulated 'Payyoli Express' P T Usha by entering the final.
Usha, who runs a running academy now, was the first Indian woman to achieve the distinction when she made the finals of the women's 400m hurdles in 1984 at Los Angeles before missing the bronze by a fraction of a second.
Lalita, in fact, finished with the seventh-best time in the heats by clipping nearly seven seconds off the existing national mark standing in the name of Sudha (9:26.55), clocked in Shanghai in May.
The top three in the three heats gained automatic qualification while Lalita made the grade as one of the six fastest from among the rest. Had she ran in the third heat she would have qualified as the winner of that race.
Sudha, on the other hand, performed far below her best to finish a distant 9th in heat 3 in a poor 9:43.29 which gave her the 30th spot out of 52 in the qualifiers.
Lalita will be seen in the final of the gruelling race on August 15.
She, in fact, had clocked 9:27.09 at New Delhi in the Federation Cup in April, her personal best which was the then national mark that was obliterated two months later by Sudha.
