Kharb bags silver, Solanki bronze

Haryana’s Sharwan Kharb brought home a silver medal in the 10000M run on the second day of 16th Asian junior athletics championships at Taipei Municipal Stadium here on Friday.

Running a tactical race with Hazuma Hattori of Japan, who is holding a much superior personal best time of 28:55.31, Sharwan remained with the leader right from the start.

However, he could not match with the increasing pace of the Japanese runner and gave away in the waning stages of the race to finish second in 31:52.37, while Hattori annexed the gold in 31:10.60.

Yaser Salem Bagharab of Yemen, running barefoot, took the bronze medal clocking 32:22.42.

The second medal for India came from shot putter Shakti Solanki. Throwers from Iran took the top two spots in this event. Shahin Mehrdelan fouled five of his six attempts. However his only valid throw that landed at 18.85m fetched him the gold from teammate Shahin Jafari (18.64m). Solanki could manage only 17.09m this evening for a bronze medal in Taipei.

Haryana girl Pinki Kumari finished outside the podium in 1,500m as she finished fifth out of six runners with a time of 4:37.53.

Two other Haryana athletes also had their events on Friday. Race walker Karan Rathi, who clocked 46:18.54 in Chennai, was even slower at Taipei (49:30.54) in his fifth place finish.

Javelin thrower Sharmila Kumari finished sixth (46.36m) while Japan’s Shiori Touma nailed the gold in 55.75m.