Quarter-miler Machettira Raju Poovamma and heptathlete Liksy Joseph won a silver each as India added four medals on the second day of the 21st Asian Athletics Championships in Wuhan, China, on Thursday.
Poovamma, who also won a silver in the last edition of the championships in 2013, clocked 53.07 seconds in women's 400 metres final to finish second, behind China's Yang Huizhen (52.37s). She was followed by Anastasiya Kudinova (53.41) of Kazakhstan.
Joseph, who was trailing in sixth place at the end of opening day of the event on Wednesday, cleared 6.19m in the long jump on Thursday to move up to third.
Although she did not do well in the javelin throw, she won the 800 metres, the last of her seven events, with a time of 2:13.44 seconds. The effort gave her a personal best of 5,554 points and the sliver medal.
Teammate and former Asian junior champion Purnima Hembram got bronze, scoring 5511 points.
G Lakshmanan also bagged a bronze medal after hard-fought men's 5000m race with a personal best of 13:36.62 seconds. The armyman improved upon his previous best by almost 14 seconds.
The women's sprint relay quartet of Dutee Chand, Srabani Nanda, G M Padmini and Sini Sahadevan missed a medal, finishing fourth with a timing of 45.72 seconds.
The men's 4x100m relay team, comprising Jyotishankar Debnath, Krishnakumar Rane, Amiya Kumar Mallick and Abdul Najeeb Qureshi, finished sixth in 39.67 seconds.
Manikanda Arumugam, who was controversially included in the relay squad, did not run the race.
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 Thursday’s five medals, India's medal tally swelled to one gold, two silver and three bronze.
On Wednesday, Inderjeet Singh won gold in the men's shot put to open India's medal account.
Image: Machettira Raju Poovamma
Photograph: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images
