Asian Games athletics: Relay team gives gold, Preeja silver (Roundup)

GUANGZHOU - Indian athletes churned out their best performance in Asian Games by winning five gold medals and ended the final day of the track and field events on a high note with the women’s quartet defending their title in the 4×400 metres relay race here Friday.

Besides the gold from the women’s quarter of Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose, Ashwini Chidananda and Mandeep Kaur, India also won a silver and bronze from Preeja Sreedharan and Kavita Raut in the women’s 5,000 metres at the Aoti Main Stadium.

The women’s 4×400m relay team in a sensational burst retained the gold medal it had won four years back in the Doha Asian Games.

The victory gave India its fifth gold in athletics, and 13th overall. Incidentally, the women’s relay team gave India its only gold in athletics at the Doha Games four years ago.

The quartet of Manjeet, Sini, Ashwini and Mandeep, who 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 secs and China (Zhihui Zheng, Xiaoyin Tang, Lian Chen, Jingwen Chen) the bronze with 3:30.89 secs.

Manjeet, who was member of the gold winning team in Doha, 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 400 metres 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 50 metres.

Earlier in the day, Preeja and Kavita won the silver and bronze medals in the women’s 5,000 metres final of the track and field event at the Asian Games here Friday.

Preeja won the silver with her personal best timing of 15:15.89 seconds and Kavita got the bronze also with her personal best timing of 15:16.54. Preeja and Kavita had won the gold and silver in the women’s 10,000 metres.

Bahrain’s Mimi Belete Gebregeiorges won the gold with a personal best 15:15.59.

There was heartbreak for the men as they missed medals by a whisker in the triple jump and the men’s 4×100m relay.

Triple jumper Renjith Maheshwary finished fourth with a jump of 16.76m while the bronze went to Chinese Cao Shuo with a leap of 16.84m. Another Chinese Li Yanxi won the gold medal with 16.94m while Kazakh Yevgeniy Ektov won the silver with 16.86m.

The relay team finished fourth in a photo-finish and missed the bronze medal by 1/100th of a second. The Indian team comprising Rahamatulla Molla, Sathya Suresh, Naseema Shameer Mon and Abdul Najeeb Qureshi clocked 39.10 secs while the bronze went to the Thailand team with a timing of 39.09 secs.

The gold went to hosts China with a personal best timing of 38.78 secs while Chinese Taipei bagged the silver in 39.05 secs. The 4×400m relay team also finished fourth.