Asian C’ships: Mixed relay team wins gold as India’s medal rush picks up pace with 4 silver

Gumi (S korea): India’s 4x400m mixed relay team defended its gold with a domineering performance after four individual silvers and a bronze in varying events bolstered the country’s overall tally to eight medals on a brilliant second day outing at the 26th Asian Athletics Championship here.

The Indian quartet of Rupal Chaudhary, Santhosh Kumar, Vishal TK and Subha Venkatesan won the top honours with a timing of 3 minutes,18.12 seconds. Of these, Rupal also claimed the individual women’s 400m silver earlier in the day.

China ended second with a time of 3:20.52s, and Sri Lanka, who clocked 3:21.95s to take third place, were both disqualified. The reasons for their disqualification have not been disclosed yet.

Due to the disqualifications, Kazakhstan (3:22.70s) and Korea (3:22.87s) clinched the silver and bronze medals, respectively.

The largely US-based Tejaswin Shankar was among the silver winners for India, finishing second in decathlon after accumulating a score of 7618 following the regulation 10 events. Praveen Chithravel also bagged a silver medal in men’s triple jump with a best effort of 16.90m.