press trust of india
Wuhan, June 4: Orissa’s Purnima Hembram won the heptathalon bronze medal in the 21st Asian Championships here Thursday. She finished third with 5,511 points behind teammate Liksy Joseph (5,554) who won the silver.
Quartermiler Machettira Raju Poovamma also won a silver medal with a time of 53.07 seconds in the women’s 400m. The gold went to China’s Yang Huizhen (52.37s).
G Lakshmanan got a bronze medal in a hard-fought men’s 5000m race with a personal best of 13:36.62 seconds. Lakshmanan, employed with Indian Army, improved his previous best by almost 14 seconds.
The women’s sprint relay quartet of Dutee Chand, Srabani Nanda, GM Padmini and Sini Sahadevan missed a medal by finishing fourth with a time of 45.72 seconds. In the 100 metres sprint for women, Srabani finished fifth with a career best time of 11.48 seconds. The men’s 4x100m relay team comprising Jyotishankar Debnath, Krishnakumar Rane, Amiya Mallick and Abdul Najeeb Qureshi finished sixth in 39.67 seconds.
There was also disappointment in men’s long jump as both Ankit Sharma (7.76m) and KumaravelPremkumar (7.69m) finished outside the podium in fourth and fifth places. Local lad Gao Xinglong (7.96m), Ted Hooper of Chinese-Taipei (7.80m) and Tang Chen of China (7.79m) bagged the gold, silver and bronze respectively.
With the four medals Thursday, India’s medal tally swelled to one gold, two silver and two bronze. Inderjeet Singh had bagged a gold Wednesday in the men’s shot put event to open India’s medal account.
In the men’s 400m race, Asian Games bronze medallist Arokya Rajeev could manage only a seventh place finish in 46.65 seconds.
In other events, Anu Raghavan qualified for women’s 400m hurdles final clocking 59.28 seconds as she finished fourth in heat number 2. However, Youth Olympic Games silver medallist Durgesh Kumar Pal crashed out in the men’s 400m heats.
