Nairobi: The Indian mixed 4x400m relay team on Wednesday won bronze here to clinch the country’s fifth medal in the history of the World Athletics Under-20 Championships.The Indian quartet of Barath Sridhar (Tamil Nadu), Priya Mohan, Summy and Kapil clocked 3:20.60 seconds to finish third in the final. Nigeria and Poland won the gold and silver medals with timings of 3:19.70s and 3:19.80s respectively.
India had entered the final as the second-best team overall with a championship record timing of 3:23.36s in the heat races. The record was, however, short-lived as the athletes from Nigeria improved it by finishing their race in Heat 2 with a timing of 3:21.66s.
India made a change to the team ahead of the final, with Barath running in Abdul Razzaq’s place. Barath had clocked 47.55s during the Federation Cup National Junior Championships in Sangrur recently. “It is a wonderful moment for me and my teammates. It is a dream come true for us to win a medal at an international event. We want to thank World Athletics and our host Kenya for making it happen,” said Barath.
Before Wednesday’s bronze in the mixed 4x400m relay event, India had won medals through Seema Antil (bronze in discus throw, 2002), Navjeet Kaur Dhillon (bronze in discus throw, 2014), Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra (gold in javelin throw, 2016) and Hima Das (gold in 400m, 2018) in the World U-20 meet.
Priya also qualified for the 400m final after finishing third, clocking 53.79s in Heat 3. The final will be held on Saturday. The second Indian in the fray, Summy fizzled out in Heat 2 and finished fifth with a timing of 55.43 seconds. In the men’s shot put event, Amandeep Singh Dhaliwal qualified for the final with a best throw of 17.92m.
However, Vipin Kumar faltered in hammer throw. His best attempt of 63.17m was way below the qualifying mark of 74m. In javelin throw, both Kunwer Ajai Singh Rana and Jay Kumar made the cut for the final.
Rana threw the spear to 71.05m while Kumar cleared a distance of 70.34m. The javelin throw final will be held here on Friday.