New Delhi: Anju Bobby George's disappointing season continued as the world No. 4 finished a lowly seventh at the Qatar IAAF Super Tour at Doha.
Anju, who was the top ranked long jumper in the event, could manage only 6.43m and failed to make the most of the absence of the top three athletes -- Tatyana Kotova, Tianna Madison and Grace Upshaw, who gave a skip to the meet.
The gold medal went to world No. 5 Oksana Udmurtova of Russia who created a new meet record with a season's best jump of 7.02m.
Udmurtova's compatriot Tatyana Lebedeva claimed the silver with a leap of 6.97m.
Comonwealth Games gold medallist Australian Bronwyn Thompson was way behind in third place with 6.76m.
After her dissappointing sixth place finish in the Commonwealth Games, Anju was totally off-colour once again and finished behind such lesser names like Tunde Vaszi of Hungary (6.53m), Romanian Alina Militaru (6.53m) and American Brianna Glenn (6,47m).
Vaszi is ranked 18th in the latest world rankings, Militaru 37th and Glenn 35th.
The outcome of the contest was all the more disappointing for Anju as she was the highest ranked athlete with the top three -- Russian Tatyana Kotova and Americans Tianna Madison and Grace Upshaw -- not taking part in the meet.
The Doha meet was Anju's after the sixth place finish at the Melbourne Games and she has a packed schedule in May with the Asian Grand Prix in Bangkok (May 18), Bangalore (May 22) and Pune (May 26) followed by the Prefontaine Classic at Eugene in the United States on May 28.
Anju hopes that these events will help her reach her prime form in time for the Athletics World Cup in Greece in September and the Doha Asian Games in December.
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