India finishes second in medals tally at Asian Youth Athletics Championships

AFI Media
17/03/2019

Hong Kong. Boys medley relay team won a gold medal for India on the final day of the Asian Youth Athletics Championships 2019 in Hong Kong to help Indian youth team finish second in the overall medals tally with a total of 26 medals including eight gold, nine silver and nine bronze medals. The quartet of Karan Hegiste, Shanmuga Nalubothu, Shashikant Angadi and Abdul Razak Rasheed clocked 1:54.04 to defeat the Sri Lankan team (1:55.04) and secure the first place for the country. Chinese team clocked 1:55.45 to settle for a bronze medal.

Girl’s medley relay team of Deepthi Jeevan, Avantika Narale, Sandra Ajimon and Priya Mohan also added a silver medal to India’s tally with a time of 2:10.87. They finished behind Chinese team (2:10.71) while the bronze medal was won by Kazakhstan (2:13.79) team.

In boy’s shot put final, Amandeep Singh threw the iron ball to a distance of 19.09m in his final attempt to win a silver medal for the country. Mahesh Babu clocked 1:51.48s in the boy’s 800m final to win his first silver medal in a continental event while Shanmuga Nalubothu added one more silver medal to India’s tally by finishing second in boy’s 200m with a timing of 21.87s.

Avantika Santhosh Narale ran 24.20s to bag a silver medal in girl’s 200m final. It was her second medal in this championship after the gold which she won in 100m. Fellow Indian Deepthi secured the bronze medal with a time of 24.78s.

In girl’s 800m event, Pooja clocked 2:09.03 to secure second position while Amit Jangir clocked 8:36.34 in boy’s 3000m to add 9th silver medal to India’s tally. Chanthini Chandran finished third in girl’s 1500m race in a time of 4:36.09 and won a bronze medal for the country.

Sanjay Garnaik, Chief Coach (India Junior Team), said, “It was really a fantastic performance by our youth team. Before the competition, we expected India to win 15-20 medals but in the end finishing on second position in medals tally with a total of 26 medals is really good.”

China topped the overall medals tally with 31 medals that included 12 gold, 11 silver and eight bronze medals.