Gumi (South Korea), May 30: Gulveer Singh etched his name among the greats of Indian long-distance running by clinching his second gold medal at the Asian Athletics Championships after shattering a decade-old meet record in a tightly-contested men’s 5000m final here on Friday.
The national-record-holding runner clocked 13:24.77sec to edge past Thailand’s Kieran Tuntivate, who finished close behind at 13:24.97sec, while Japan’s Nagiya Mori took bronze in 13:25.06sec.
The previous championship record belonged to Qatar’s Mohamed Al-Garni, who had clocked 13:34.47 in the 2015 edition.
The win completed a remarkable double for the Indian, who had earlier bagged gold in the 10,000m competition on the opening day with a timing of 28:38.63sec.
With this performance, Gulveer joined an elite group of Indian athletes to have won gold in the men’s 5000m event of the continental meet — the other three being Gopal Saini (1981), Bahadur Prasad (1993), and G Lakshmanan (2017).
The 26-year-old from Atrauli in Uttar Prtadesh had also won a bronze in the 2023 edition.
However, there was mild disappointment in the women’s 3000m steeplechase, where defending champion Parul Chaudhary had to settle for silver.
She clocked 9:12.46sec and was bested by Kazakhstan’s Norah Jeruto Tanui (9:10.46sec). The bronze also went to a Kazakh, Daisy Jepkemei (9:27.51sec).
Gulveer’s triumph gave India their sixth gold medal of the championships, pushing the country’s overall tally to six gold, seven silver, and three bronze medals so far.
Earlier, India’s 4x100m men’s relay team was disqualified during the preliminary round after a faulty baton exchange but Sachin Yadav and Yashvir Singh made the men’s javelin throw finals alongside reigning Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan.
The quartet of Pranav Pramod Gaurav, Ragul Kumar Ganesh, Manikanta Hoblidhar and Amlan Borgohain was knocked out of the competition after being found guilty of baton exchange outside the takeover zone, violating World Athletics’ Technical Rule 24.7.
The Malaysian team was also disqualified for a similar violation.
However, there was good news for the Indian contingent elsewhere as Sachin and Yashvir entered the 12-man javelin throw final.
While Sachin covered 79.62m to be placed fifth, Yashvir qualified for Saturday’s finale with a throw of 76.67m.
At the top was Nadeem, who is appearing in his first competition since the gold-winning monstrous throw of 92.97m in the Paris Olympics last year. He came up with an effort of 86.34m in the qualifying round.
In other events, women’s 100m hurdles gold-winner Jyothi Yarraji and Nithya Gandhe advanced to the 200m finals after clocking 23.74sec and 23.77sec respectively in their heats.
In the men’s 200m event, Animesh Kujur entered the semifinals after clocking 20.98sec in his preliminary race.
Also, India continued to be the gold favourite in heptathlon after Nandini Agsara took her tally to 4500 points at the end of five events, long jump being held this morning where she finished on top after covering 6.13m.
She leads China’s Liu Jingyi, who has 4210 points, with just javelin throw and 800m events left to be completed later this evening. (PTI)
