Asian Games athletics: India win gold in women’s 4×400m relay
By IANSFriday, November 26, 2010
GUANGZHOU - The Indian women’s 4×400m relay team, in a sensational burst, defended their gold medal in the Asian Games here Friday.
The victory gave India its fifth gold in athletics, and 13th overall. The women’s relay team had given India its only gold in athletics at the 2006 Doha Games.
The quartet of Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose, Ashwini Chidananda and Mandeep Kaur, which won the gold in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, came on top here clocking 3:29.02 seconds.
Kazakhstan (Marina Maslyonko, Viktoriya Yalovtseva, Margarita Matsko, Olga Tereshkova) got the silver in 3:30.03 and China (Zhihui Zheng, Xiaoyin Tang, Lian Chen, Jingwen Chen) the bronze in 3:30.89.
Manjeet gave India a good start and Sini maintained the pace with a good run before handing the baton to Ashwini.
Ashwini, who won the gold in 400m hurdles, steamed ahead with rapid strides to break away from the pack and left Kazakh Margarita way behind.
It was left to Mandeep to give it a winning finish, but the tall Kazakh runner Olga came from behind to lead briefly. Seasoned Mandeep, however, had enough fuel to pull to outpace Olga in the last 50m.
