India enjoyed a fruitful outing in the 16th Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea on Saturday with a one-two finish by Manjit Kaur and Sati Geetha in the women's 400m.
The gold and silver medals won in the one-lap race turned out to be the highlight for India on the penultimate day of the championship, which also saw Jagdish Kumar claiming the bronze in javelin throw.
Manjit Kaur claimed the gold for the country with a time of 51.50 seconds while Sati Geetha was home in 51.75secs. Japan's Asami Tanno got the bronze with 52.91 seconds. The effort of the Indian duo was the best for the season.
Jagdish Kumar's effort of 74.83 metres fetched him the bronze behind Li Rongxiang of China who hurled the spear to a 78.28 metres to claim the gold and Korea's Sang Jin Jung (76.85m) who bagged the silver.
After three days of competition, India's tally reads two golds, three silver and three bronze medals.
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In the men's pole vault, Gajanan Kumar Upadhyaya could clear only 4.80m on his third attempt and finished 11th. Japan's Daidhi Sawano who cleared the bar at a height of 5.40m won the gold.
In the women's 5000m, India's O P Jaisha finished seventh with a timing of 16 minutes 34.32 seconds. The gold medal went the way of China's Xue Bai who clocked 5:40.89secs.
Another Indian in the fray, Aruna Devi did not start the race.
The men's decathlon, which had its first five events today, saw India's Kulwinder Singh lying in fifth position with 3,734 points, 330 adrift of current leader Kun Woo Kim of Korea.
India's Jora Singh was languishing in ninth place with 3,555 points at the half-way mark.
Meanwhile, India's Santhi Soundarajan and Sinimol Paulose qualified for the finals of the women's 800 metres to be run on Sunday.
Santhi clocked 2:10.29sec in her heat to finish second to Miho Sugimori of Japan. In the second heat, Paulose finished in 2:07.27secs behind Japanese Ayako Jinnouchi.
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