Swapna Barman won a silver medal in Heptathlon at the Asian Athletics Championships on Tuesday in Doha, Qatar after scoring a season-best 5993 points. The 4x400m Mixed relay team followed suit by winning another silver later in the day to take India’s medal tally at the event to 13.
Sanjivani Jadhav won a bronze in 10000m race later in the evening.
With the two silver and one bronze on Tuesday, India stood fourth in the medal tally with two gold, five silver and six bronze at the end of the third and penultimate day.
The 22-year-old Barman won India’s first medal on day three and made it the 11th medal overall for the country at the ongoing event. Barman finished with the silver medal behind Uzbekistan’s Ekaterina Vornina, who scored 6198 points and missed breaking legendary Ghada Shouaa’s meet record of 6259 points.
Vornina, who was returning to competition after giving birth to her daughter, was rather pleased with the result. “I won the Asian Games in 2014 and the Asian Championships in 2015, but I missed the 2017 edition to give birth (had a daughter). It feels so good to be back on top,” said Vornina, whose points total is a world lead.
Barman, however, was not satisfied after taking second place. “Not very happy, I am not pleased with my result in javelin throw this morning. Preparation was not good, I am injury queen you know (laughs), had a problem with my ankle. I really wanted to do better,” she said.
Barman had won gold medals at the Asian Championships in 2017 and the Asian Games in 2018.
The other Indian in the fray, Purnima Hembram, finished fifth with 5528 points.
In the 4X400m Mixed Relay event, India won the silver medal after clocking 3:16.47. Bahrain took the gold medal. India had a lead at the end of the second leg but was unable to hold onto its advantage.
Hima Das who pulled out of 400m due to lower back spasm did not take part in the event.
The 22-year-old Sanjivani won the last medal of the day for India as she clocked a personal best time of 32:44.96 to finish third behind Bahrain’s Shitaye Habtegebrel (31:15.62) and Japan’s Hitomi Niiya (31:22.63).
In the women’s 3000m steeplechase, India’s Parul Chaudhary, who won a bronze in the 5000m, finished fifth with a personal best time of 10:03.43. Bahrain’s Yavi won by a huge margin.
In the women’s 4x100m relay race, India finished fourth with the quartet of Dutee Chand, Archana Suseentra, Revathi Veeramani and Kunnath Ranga clocking 43.81 secs.
After a disappointing fifth place finish in the 100m dash, Dutee ran the 200m heats and qualified for the final. She won her heat in 23.33 seconds.
In men’s 1500m race, Ajay Kumar Saroj qualified for the finals after clocking 3 minute 49.20 seconds in the heats. Saroj’s colleague and top medal contender Jinson Johnson pulled out of the 1500m race due to injury in a big jolt to India.
“His left calf muscle is troubling him at the moment. Doctors have advised him not to compete in such situation,” Deputy chief coach Radhakrishnan Nair said in a statement.
Johnson did not also compete his 800m final race on Monday. He holds national records in both 800m and 1500m.
(With PTI inputs)
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