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Shakti Singh wins silver

September 23, 2003 21:39 IST

Shakti Singh won India's third silver medal at the 15th Asian Athletics Championships, finishing second in the men's shot put on the concluding day of the meet in Manila, the Philippines, on Tuesday.

India also won another bronze in the women's 4x400 relay, but apart from these two medals, it was again a tale of disappointment for the Indian contingent which is competing in Manila without its top athletes.

Shakti cleared a distance of 19.04m to finish a distant second behind Qatar's Bilal Saad Mubarak, who cleared 19.41m.

Qatar also won the bronze when Khaled Habash al-Suwaidi finished further behind, clearing 18.57m.

The women's 4x400 relay team won a bronze behind China and Kazakhstan to take India's collection to three silver and three bronze medals in the four-day meet.

The quartet of Pinki Parmanik, Manjeet Kaur, S Geetha and Kalpana Reddy clocked 3:35.34 seconds to finish third. China clocked 3:31.30s and Kazakhstan 3:32.82s.

India's medal hopes in the men's 800m were shattered when Asian Games silver medallist K M Binu was forced to pull out of the race with fever. The gold in the event went to Adam Abdu Ali of Qatar, who won in 1:46.20 seconds.

The men's 4x100 relay team, comprising Anil Kumar, Sanjay Ghosh, Piyush Kumar and Amit Saha, finished fourth in the final, clocking 39.69. The team had clocked 39.93 in the heats.

Madhuri Saxena, who won a silver in the 1500m, failed to repeat her performance in the 800m when she finished fourth in 2 minutes, 3.48 seconds. She had won the silver in the same event at the Busan Asian Games last year.

Kuldeep Kumar (14:34.77) and Gulab Chand (14:37.36) finished fifth and sixth respectively in the men's 5000m. 

Qatar's Abdulrahman Amri Abdelaziz won the gold, stopping the clock in 13:58.89 seconds.

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