Sports India

New Delhi: Anju Bobby George’s recent lacklustre performances have resulted in her dropping two spots to number six in the latest IAAF women’s long jump rankings.

The ace Indian athlete fell from the fourth place she had been holding for the past two months.

After the Melbourne Commonwealth Games where the lanky Keralite finished sixth, she took time off but her fortunes did not show an upswing on her return to the circuit.

She finished a lowly seventh at the Doha Super Grand Prix earlier this month and, to make matters worse, suffered a heel injury during training which forced her out of the first leg of the Asian Grand Prix circuit in Bangkok.

She returned to competition in front of her home crowd in Bangalore, but had to settle for a silver medal with a jump of 6.35m. The gold went to little known Olga Rypakova of Kazakhstan.

Russia’s Tatyana Kotova continues to head the rankings while the big gainer was her compatriot Oksana Udmurtova, the gold medallist at Doha, who rose three spots to number two.