Sixth-place finish for Manisha

 India’s G Manisha finished a creditable sixth in the women’s Junior road race while Yao Pang of Hong Kong bagged her fifth gold at the Hero Asian Cycling Championships here on Friday.

Manisha made a good start and remained with the leading peloton for the first three laps. Though she lost a bit of steam in the subsequent lap, she maintained a steady speed to be part of second batch after five others broke away.

“My strategy was to remain as close as possible to the leading bunch. I was able to do it till the third lap. But in the fourth lap, the riders were too quick for me and they sped away,” Manisha, who won the sixth position on her 18th birthday today.

She clocked 1 hour 49 minutes and 58 seconds in the 71km race in which 32 riders started.
Another Indian rider to finish was N Geeturaj (1::54:42) while the other two — Bidhyalaxmi Devi and Chaitrali Pavsanker — could not complete the race.

Meanwhile, Yao Pang (1::48:12) continued her gold medal feast as she clinched her second medal in the road races and her fifth overall, including three in track races. Her previous gold medal came in the junior time trial event on Wednesday.

Silver medal went to Japan’s Kiyoka Sakaguchi (1::49:51) while Razan Soboh of Jordon finished fraction of a second behind Kiyoka to secure the bronze medal.

Earlier in the day, Kazakhstan riders Yerlan Pernebekov and Dmitry Rive bagged gold and silver, respectively in the 99.4 km  Junior men category. It was a photo finish with both the riders clocking two hours 18 minutes and 12 seconds.

The third place went to Japan’s Saya Kuroeda (2::19:30) while India’s Kishor Jadhav timed 2::35:13 to finish 34th.