Navpreet Singh strikes gold

Navpreet Singh came up with a season's best effort of 19.70 metres to win gold in the men's shot put on the fourth day of the Asian Athletics championship in Aaman.

Singh, whose personal best throw of 19.93 metres was three years ago, had won a silver medal in the last edition of the championship in Incheon, Korea. His earlier season's best was at the National Games in Guwahati, where he threw the iron ball to a distance of 18.60m to win gold.

Another Indian, Sourabh Vij, was sixth with a throw of 17.49m in Saturday's final.

Min-Hunag Chang (19.66m) of Chinese Taipei and Khaled Habash al Suwaidi (19.51m) of Qatar won silver and bronze respectively.

Earlier in the day, Preeja Shridharan added another silver by winning women's 5000m race while Krishna Poonia won a bronze in women's discus throw.

Preeja, who had won a silver in 10,000m on the first day of the championships on Wednesday, clocked 16:56.16s to finish second behind Bahrain's Kareema Saleh Jasmine (16:40.87s). Mi Gyong Kim of North Korea won the bronze with a time of 18:21.32s.

In women's discus, Poonia could clear 55.38m while compatriot Harwant Kaur was fourth with a throw of 52.43m.

Both the gold and silver went to Chinese athletes Shaoyang Xu (61.30m) and Yanfeng Li (61.13m).

With the three medals, India's tally has swelled to nine. They have two gold, five silver and two bronze.

Meanwhile, in the men's decathlon, P Vinod and Jora Singh failed to secure a podium finish. Vinod (7441 points) and Singh (7024) finished fourth and sixth respectively.

The gold was won by Ahmed Hassan Musa of Qatar with 7678 points. The silver and bronze went to Hadi Sepehrzad (7667 points) of Iran and Pavel Andreev (7484) of Uzbekistan respectively.

Indians also disappointed in men's 800m. Rajeev Ramesan (1:56.27s) and S P Francis (2:02.43s) finished fifth and eighth in the final.

But the Indian men's 4x100m relay quartet qualified for the final after finishing second in the heats. They clocked 40.18s behind China (39.62s) in heat number two.