'Race against weather' to rescue trapped Thai children
Bangkok, July 5 : Rescuers in Thailand are racing against the weather to free 12 boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand.
"We were racing against time before we found them. Now we are racing against weather," Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osotthanakorn said at a press conference on Thursday morning.
Heavy rains are expected to hit the Chiang Rai region soon and could see water levels rise, threatening the area of the Tham Luang cave complex, where the group has taken refuge, the BBC reported.
Chiang Rai has for the past few days experienced a brief window of dry weather.
Rescuers were now considering how best to bring the group to safety.
If the rain stops for long enough, there is a possibility that the group could walk out of the Tham Luang cave complex, or be floated out - rather than having to dive, according to Narongsak.
The total journey from the cave's entrance to the trapped group currently takes a total of 11 hours - six hours in and five hours back out.
About 128 million litres of water had been pumped out by Thursday, with the water levels coming down at an average rate of 1.5 cm per hour, reports the BBC.
The boys, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach went missing on June 23. It is believed they entered the cave when it was dry and sudden heavy rains blocked the exit.
They were found on a rock shelf about 4 km from the mouth of the cave on Monday night by two British rescuer divers.
The cave complex is regularly flooded during the monsoon season which lasts until September or October.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
