BHUBANESWAR: Odia sprinters duo Dutee Chand and Srabani Nanda produced magic as the Indian women’s relay team bagged a bronze in the 4x100 m event of the 22nd Asian Athletics Championships at Kalinga Stadium on Saturday.
After the baton was passed by Srabani in the third leg, Dutee made a fast sprint to ensure that the home team bag a medal.
The racing began with Merlin K Joseph passing on the baton to Himashree Roy but the team was running short. However, Srabani gave the sprint a huge momentum and India’s fastest woman, Dutee, scorched the lane to bag a bronze for the team which clocked 44.57 seconds.Kazakhstan took the gold with a timing of 44.50 seconds while China secured the silver clocking 44.50 seconds. The Indian relay team, featuring Dutee and Srabani, had ended at the fourth spot by registering 45.72 seconds at the Asian Athletics Championships at Wuhan in the last edition.
However, Dutee, Srabani, Jyoti and Merlyn were members of the relay team that had clocked 44.03 seconds at Almaty last year and the team had broken 18-year-old national record which was set by Saraswati Dey, Rachita Mistry, EB Shyla and PT Usha in 1998.
On a day when India raised its tally to 20 by adding one gold through Sudha Singh’s 3000m steeplechase, a silver and three bronze medals, Odia athletes held out hopes for more on the closing day on Sunday.
Purnima Hembram was going great guns at the heptathlon by scoring 3432 points and placed second at end of four out of seven events.
While the top place was grabbed by Indian athlete Swapna Barman with 3,512 points, Japanese Meg Hemphill was placed third with 3410 points. Purnima picked up 1,014 points (100m hurdles), 867 points (High Jump), 651 points (Shot Put) and 900 points (200m). On Sunday, she will participate in the Long Jump, Javelin Throw and 800 metre race.
Meanwhile, sprinter Amiya Kumar Mallick put Friday’s twin disqualifications behind him to qualify for the men’s 200m semifinals. He clocked 21.30 seconds to finish second in the heat, behind Korean Lee Jaeha with 21.18 seconds.Amiya will have to play out of his skin to land a medal because he is currently placed 12th among the top 16 contenders.