By IANS
Doha : India finished atop the medal standings with five gold, nine silver and three bronze at the Asian Athletics Indoor Championships that concluded here Saturday.
China were second with five gold, two silver and as many bronze medals while Kazakhstan was third with four gold, six silver and four bronze medals.
India’s middle distance runner Sinimol Paulose finished two gold medals while Preeja Sreedharan, P.J. Vinod and women’s 4×400 metres relay team won one gold each.
Sushma Devi bagged two silver medals and Kavita Raut, Surendra Singh (3,000m), wommen’s 4×400 metres relay team – Mandeep Kaur, Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose and Chitra Soman – as well as Anju Bobby George, Om Prakash, C. Hamza and Amarjeet Singh clinched won one each.
Leelavathi Veerappan, Mandeep Kaur and M.A. Prajusha settled for one bronze each.
On Saturday, Sinimol, 24 and reigning Asian and Asian Indoor Games champion, won her second gold with win over Matsko Mragarita of Kazakhstan in the final of women’s 800m.
Sinimol clocked 2:03.43 seconds while her compatriot Sushma Devi overtook Matsko in the last 50 metres to finish second with a personal-best time of 2:04.66 sec. Matsko was third in 2:04.85 sec.
The women’s relay team won the gold with a championship record time of 3:37.46 sec. Kazaksthan finished second with 3:38.10 sec while Thailand took the bronze in 3:43.22 sec.
The men’s 4x400m relay team, comprising Thannickkal Aboobcker, Chaudhary Vinay, Bhullar Gurvinder Pal Singh and Pankaj Virender Kumar, won the silver with a timing of 3:16.53 sec in the last final of the championships.
Saudi Arabia dominated the race from start to finish. Winning in 3:14.25 sec to register the sixth championship record of the third and final day. Host Qatar finished third with 3:17.93 sec.
In the men’s 3,000m final, Surendra won the silver with a new personal best of 7:49.47 sec – an improvement of more than 15 seconds to his indoor best.
India’s Om Prakash, participating in his maiden indoor competition, earned silver and first continental championship medal for himself in the men’s shot put final with a throw of 18.37 metres, which was better than the championship record.
Gholoum Ahmed of Kuwait won gold with a throw of 18.55m. Yao Yong Guang of China took bronze with 18.16m throw.
India’s Vinod, Asian Indoor Games champion, once again tallied the same number of points, 5,561, achieved in the Macau Asian Indoor Games to win the indoor heptathlon gold medal.
Sephrzad Hadi of Iran finished on second place with 5,515 points and Hiromasa Tanaka of Japan took bronze with 5,306 points.