The Indian mixed 4x400m relay team on Wednesday won a bronze to clinch the country’s fifth medal in the history of the World Athletics U20 Championships.
The Indian quartet of Barath Sridhar, Priya Habbathanahalli 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, at the event held at the Moi International Sports Centre here.
India had entered the final as the second best team overall with a championship record timing of 3:23.36s in the heat races held in the morning.
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.
In the heats, the relay team of Abdul Razak Rasheed, Priya Mohan, Summy and Kapil finished ahead of the Czech Republic, Jamaica and Poland.
For the final, Rasheed was replaced by Barath Sridhar, the junior Federation Cup champion.
Priya Mohan also reached the 400m final.
In other events, in the men’s javelin throw, India’s Kunwar Ajai Raj Singh Rana and Jay Kumar made it to the final after finishing 6th and 7th respectively in qualification, while Amandeep Singh Dhaliwal reached the men’s shot put final.
Rana threw 71.05m while Kumar managed an attempt of 70.34. Both attempts were well short of the direct qualification mark of 73m but they comfortably finished among the top 12 competitors.
The mixed relay bronze is India’s fifth medal at the World Athletics U20 Championships but just the second one in a track event after Hima Das’ 400m gold medal in 2018.
With this bronze India have now won medals at four successive U20 world athletics championships.
Before Wednesday’s bronze, 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.