Asian Athletics Championships: Hurdler Jyothi, Triple Jumper Aboobacker, runner Ajay Kumar clinch gold medals as India medal tally goes up to six   

Harpal Singh Bedi  
New Delhi, 13 July: Indian athletes produced some scintillating performance as hurdler Jyothi Yarraji, triple jumper Abdulla Aboobacker and middle-distance runner Ajay Kumar Saroj wongold medals while Aishwarya Kailash Mishra, in women’s 400m, and Tejaswin Shankar, competing in decathlon, settled for bronze medals at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok, Thailand on Thursday.
With today’s five medals ,India’s medal tally has gone up to six- Three Gold, Three Bronze.  Abhishek Pal had won a bronze in10,000m on Wednesday
  In women’s 100m hurdles, Jyothi Yarraji could not match her national record of 12.82s under wet conditions but her timing of 13.09s was enough to beat Asuka Terada of Japan,who came a close second, clocking 13.13s. This was the first gold medal for the 23-year-old Indian at the continental event.  Asuka Terada’s compatriot Masumi Aoki clocked 13.26s to bag bronze, edging out India’s Nithya Ramraj, who came fourth in 13.55s. Jyothi had also topped the heats earlier in the day with a timing of 12.98s.
  Ajay Kumar Saroj clinched his second gold medal for the country in the 1500m race .The 2017 champion had settled for a silver medal at the last edition held inDoha four years ago but regained his title with a timing of 3:41.51 at the Suphachalasai National Stadium .
  Yusuke Takahashi of Japan won silver in 3:42.04 while China’s Liu Dezhu clinched bronze in 3:42.30. Reigning Asian Games champion Jinson Johnson, who holds the nationalrecord of 3:35.24, finished 11th among 19 runners with 3:46.91.
 Triple jumper Abdulla Aboobacker, who won silver at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham with a 17.02m effort, bagged the gold medal with a season’s best leap of 16.92m inBangkok. The winning jump came in his fourth attempt.   Hikaru Ikehata of Japan hit 16.73m for silver while Kim Jangwoo of the Republic of Korea won bronze for his 16.59m effort.
Aishwarya Kailash Mishra, in women’s 400m, and Tejaswin Shankar, competing in men’s decathlon, settled for bronze medals.  Aishwarya who has a personal best of 51.18, finished her 400m race in 53.07. Ramanayake Nadeesha (52.61) of Sri Lanka claimed gold ahead of Farida Solieva of Uzbekistan, who clocked 52.95 seconds.
 Commonwealth Games high jump bronze medalist Tejaswin Shankar led the decathlon with 4,124 points from five events on Wednesday. However, a score of 562 in the polevault and 627 in the discus throw by the Indian athlete saw Yuma Maruyama of Japan and Suttisak Singkhon of Thailand leapfrog him on the leaderboards.
  Yuma Maruyama won the gold medal with 7,745 points, Suttisak Singkhon, with 7,626 points, claimed the sliver while Tejaswin Shankar scored 7,527 points to complete the podium.
In 400m, India’s Muhammed Ajmal missed out on a medal despite pulling off a season’s best performance. He finished fourth in 45.36 while compatriot Rajesh Ramesh was sixthin 45.67, also a season’s best.
 Asian Championships 2017 bronze medalist Sanjivani Baburao Jadhav also came fourth in the women’s 10,000m with a timing of 34:04.47. In the women’s high jump, Pooja and Rubina Yadavtied for seventh place. Both had a best of 1.75m.