Taipei City: Notwithstanding the initial hiccups, Indian athletes had a most profitable outing on the final and concluding day of Asian junior athletics championships in Taipei Municipal Stadium here on Sunday.
Naturally the most outstanding performer among the Indian squad has been Dutee Chand. The sprinter hails from Odisha state and is training in the national senior camp at Patiala, Chand virtually outclassed her opposition and went on to win the junior women’s 200m gold with a time of 23.74 secs. Singapore’s Shanti Veronica Pereira (23.99s) and Nigina Sharipova (24.24s) of Uzbekistan were the other medalists.
Earlier on Saturday Dutee Chand clocked a much impressive 23.57 secs while winning her qualifying heats that shattered Pandeswari’s 16-year-old national junior record of 23.95 secs as well as Vinitha Tripathi’s Indian junior best time of 23.59 secs registered during the SAF Games.
Unfortunately Dutee was forced to skip her 100m heats on the opening day of the championships due to late arrival of Indian team, otherwise could have created history with a golden sprint double. Nevertheless Dutee still got her second gold medal from the meet as she anchored the successful Indian 4x400m relay quartet to victory with V.V. Jisha, Jessy Joseph and G.K. Vijayakumari.
Navjeet won second medal in discus throw
Navjeet Kaur Dhillon, who opened India’s medal tally with a bronze medal in shot put on Thursday, went to secure a silver medal in discus throw. She hurled the disc to 53.66m for the second place while China’s Xie Yu-Chen won the gold with 55.65m.
Heptathlete Swapna Barman, trailing third in her campaign at the end of previous day, improved upon to win a silver medal by garnered 4962 points. Thailand’s Kotchakorn Khamrueangsri had won the event with 5290 points.
India also won two bronze medals through distance runners Sanjivani Jadhav and Sharwan Kharb. While Jadhav clocked 9:35.02 in junior women’s 3000m, Kharb timed 14:39.41 in junior men’s 5000m – both personal bests – for the above medals.
A much expected medal was slipped from India’s hands as javelin thrower Parvinder Kumar could manage only a fifth place as he set out the spear to a distance of 63.82m. Back in Chennai during the Junior Federation Cup last month Parvinder registered 69.06m. The gold medal in this event went to hosts Chinese-Taipei’s Shui-Cang Hsu (67.24m).
Once again China was triumphant with a champion nation status as they garnered 12 gold, 10 silver and 2 bronze medals, closely followed by Japan (11-5-5) and Qatar took the third spot in 6-2-1. Hosts Chinese-Taipei ranked fourth with 4-3-8 while India managed to climb in the fifth place with final tally of 2 gold, 2 silver and 5 bronze medals.