Gumi (S korea): Long-distance runner Gulveer Singh shattered a decade-old meet record, high-jumper Pooja Singh delivered a personal best show, while heptathlete Nandini Agasara rose to the occasion after a setback as the trio added three more gold medals to India’s kitty on the penultimate day of the 26th Asian Athletics Championships here on Friday.
The country’s overall tally swelled to 18, including eight gold, seven silver and three bronze medals. India look well on course to match or better the 27 medals won in the 2023 edition, having already surpassed the gold haul of six medals in that year.
Gulveer etched his name among the greats of Indian long-distance running by winning a tightly-contested men’s 5,000m final to add to his 10,000m gold won on the opening day of the competition.
The national record-holding runner clocked 13 minutes, 24.77 seconds to edge past Thailand’s Kieran Tuntivate, who finished close behind at 13:24.97, while Japan’s Nagiya Mori took bronze in 13:25.06.
With this performance, Gulveer joined an elite group of the Indian athletes to have won gold in the men’s 5,000m event of the continental meet -- the other three being Gopal Saini (1981), Bahadur Prasad (1993), and G Lakshmanan (2017). He matched Lakshmanan in winning gold in both the 10,000m and 5000m events in the same edition.
The previous championship record belonged to Qatar’s Mohamed Al-Garni, who had clocked 13:34.47 in the 2015 edition.
Later, 18-year-old Pooja jumped to a personal best of 1.89m in her penultimate attempt to finish ahead of Uzbekistan’s Safina Sadullaeva (1.86m). Nandini then became only the third Indian heptathlete to win an Asian gold after Swapna Barman (2017) and Soma Biswas (2005). Agasara collected 5,941 points to bag the top honours, making a strong comeback to win the 800m race after a poor javelin throw performance of 34.18m.