Nomi [Japan], March 19 (ANI): India’s Akshdeep Singh clinched the gold medal whereas Priyanka Goswami bagged bronze within the males’s and girls’s classes respectively on the Asian 20km Race Walking Championships 2023 held in Nomi, Japan on Sunday.
Among the opposite Indian athletes, Vikash Singh and Paramjeet Bisht clocked 1:20:05 and 1:20:08, respectively, within the males’s open class which noticed them breach the 1:20:10 mark – the qualification requirements for each the 2023 World Championships and Paris 2024 Olympics.
At the National Championships earlier this month, Akshdeep Singh and Priyanka Goswami had already certified for the World Championships and the Paris Olympics.
National document holder Akshdeep Singh gained the lads’s 20km race stroll occasion with a time of 1:20:57. After Olympian Gurmeet Singh in 2016, the athlete from Punjab gained India’s second gold medal.
Choe Byeongkwang of South Korea completed second with a time of 1:21:20, whereas Wen Yongjie of China took bronze with a time of 1:22:44.
Meanwhile, Commonwealth Games 2022 silver medalist Priyanka Goswami completed third within the girls’s occasion in 1:32:27. Lan Gao of China gained gold with a time of 1:29:25. Ayane Yanai of Japan completed second in 1:0:58, forward of the Indian athlete.
With these medals, India’s total tally on the championships elevated to 9 (two golds, two silvers, and 5 bronzes).
Suraj Panwar and Hardeep Singh of India completed the lads’s race in 1:22:31 and 1:25:38, respectively. In the ladies’s race, Tokyo Olympian Bhawana Jat completed at 1:36:20, whereas her compatriot Munita Prajapati completed at 1:33:22. Sonal Sukhwal didn’t begin.
The Asian 20km Race Walking Championship 2023 featured 9 Indian athletes, 5 males and 4 girls.
The fifteenth version of the race, an annual race-walking competitors for athletes representing nations from Asia, was held after a hiatus of three years following the COVID-19 pandemic. (ANI)