India's two leading sprinters were dealt a body blow as an avoidable technical glitch cost them their berths to participate in the 2016 Rio Olympics. In a qualifying event, the Indian Grand Prix athletics championships at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, a power cut meant that their apparently record-breaking performances could not be officially classified. The power outage at the venue led to farcical scenes as the electronically powered digital time recorders and wind gauges went kaput and the organisers were forced to use hand-held clocks to record the times set by the athletes. Four new national records were clocked while two athletes ran below the qualifying time for the Rio games beginning in August. But their joy was short-lived when it was confirmed their times would not be ratified. However, it's not the end of the world for these two athletes from Odisha - Amiya Kumar Mallick and Srabani Nandaware. The two will get another shot at qualifying for Rio 2016 at the Federation Cup senior national athletics meet set to start tomorrow (Thursday) at the same venue. All they would hope for is the power supply to not pack up.

Mallick's timing of his 100 metres sprint was 10.09 seconds, which not only shattered the national record by 0.21 seconds but was also quicker than the Olympic qualification mark of 10.16 seconds.

"It's disappointing because I know I had run a quick time. But it will not count for anything because the electronic timing was not working," Mallick was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

On the other hand, Srabani Nandaware won the women's 100 metres in 11.23 seconds, apparently breaking the 16-year-old national record of 11.38 seconds and faster than the Rio qualification time of 11.32 seconds.

An official from the organisers Athletics Federation of India said stadium administrators had blamed the blackout on a transformer fire. "There were generators there but still they said there is no back up," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Sunny Joshua, president of the Delhi Athletics Association which co-hosted the event, said the outage happened just as the competition began. "It happened all a sudden just before the start of the meet. We didn't even get the back up, so it was very disappointing," Joshua told AFP. "But let's not play the blame game. I don't think anybody would do this on purpose. It has happened for the first time in 30 odd years, so I hope it's just a one-time incident," he added.