PETALING JAYA: National runner Shereen Samson Vallabouy won the Kazakhstan Open gold medal but is it enough to get her to the Olympics on rankings?
The 25-year-old athlete, who is based in Florida, clocked 52.57s in the 400m final at the Almaty Olympic Training Centre on Saturday (June 22).
To break the top 48 of the Road to Paris rankings, she needed to rewrite her national record of 51.79s, but she failed to hit the target in Almaty.
Her fate will be known once the rankings are updated on Monday (June 24).
Another athlete hunting for an Olympic spot Mohd Azeem Fahmi failed to win his 100m race after he finished third.
Thailand’s Puripol Boonson took the gold with a time of 10.23s.
The race though was blighted with controversy when there were three false starts but the athletes responsible for it didn't leave the track and continued to race.
The three athletes who did the false starts were Turkey’s Kayhan Ozer and Ertan Ozkan and Tajikistan’s Favoris Muzrapov.
Ozer finished second in the race but to date, the official results have not been released by the organisers yet.
