Olympian Jisna Mathew retained her women’s 400m gold comfortably while men’s long jumper M. Sreeshankar, making a comeback following an appendicitis surgery, took a bronze in the 18th Asian junior athletics championships here on Friday.
Indians won four other bronze medals on the second day.
Senior Asian bronze medallist Jisna did not have to sweat for her gold and she clocked 53.26s to finish well ahead of Sri Lankan Dilshi Kumarasinghe (54.03).
Sreeshankar clearly was not targeting any medals at Gifu. With the under-20 Worlds in Finland and the Asian Games in Jakarta lined up in the next two months, he just wanted to get the feel back.
The 19-year-old from Palakkad was in the fifth spot after the third round but his next effort (7.47m) turned out to be a medal jump.
“I am not happy with the performance but definitely happy with the bronze, especially after what I went through in the last few months,” Sreeshankar told The Hindu on Friday.
“The colour of the medal does not matter at all. My approach did not go very well but this is the first time I am doing a full run-up after the surgery so it was okay.”
Shot putter Ajay Bhalothia had a day’s best of 18.22m for the bronze.
Karnataka’s Abhinaya Shetty equalled her personal best 1.75m to take the women’s high jump bronze, while UP’s Karthik Kumar in the men’s 10,000m and Maharashtra’s Durga Deore (women’s 1500m) brought the other bronze medals.
The results (gold medallists and Indians): Men: 100m: 1. Lalu Muhammed Zohri (Ino) 10.27s (Gurvinder Singh, Ind, fourth in heats with 11.09s).
400m: 1. Aruna Dharshana (SL) 45.79s. 1500m: 1. M.K. A. Saife Saifeldin (Qat), 3:49.30s, 4. Ankit (Ind), 6. Ajeet Kumar (Ind). 10,000m: 1. Suo Lang Cairn (Chn) 30:01.51s, 3. Kartik Kumar (Ind) 30:05.30, 9. Gurpreet (Ind).
Long jump: 1. Yugo Sakai (Jpn) 7.61m, 3. M. Sreeshankar (Ind) 7.47, 7. S. Lokesh (Ind) 7.36. Shot put: 1. Ibrahim Moaaz Mohammed (Qat) 18.57m, 3. Ashish Bhalothia (Ind) 18.22. Decathlon: 1. Wang Chen-Yu (Tpe) 7200 pts.
10,000m walk: 1. Hao Gong (Chn) 42:47.98s, Sanjay Kumar (Ind) DNF, Juned (Ind) DQ.
Women: 100m: 1. Feng Lulu (Chn) 11.68s. 400m: 1. Jisna Mathew (Ind) 53.26s. 1500m: 1. Ririka Hironaka (Jpn) 4:17.62s, 3. Durga Deore (Ind) 4:24.56.
High jump: 1. Maryam Abdulelah (Irq) 1.80m, 3. Abhinaya Shetty (Ind) 1.75, 5. Gracena Merly (Ind) 1.72. Javelin: 1. Li Hui-Jun (Tpe) 55.36m.