A heady mix: Relay team wins U-20 Worlds bronze

Less than a fortnight after Neeraj Chopra’s historic javelin gold in the Olympics, India’s

track and field

athletes gave their countrymen another reason to celebrate by winning a relatively rare medal in the

U-20 Athletics World Championships

— a bronze in the 4x400m mixed relay — in Nairobi on Wednesday.


This was only the fifth medal won by the Indians in the history of the championships – following

Seema Antil

’s bronze in discus throw in 2002, another discus bronze by

Navjeet Kaur Dhillon

in 2014, Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold in 2016 and Hima Das’s 400m gold two years later.

It was an impressive performance by the Indian quartet — Barath Sridhar, Priya Mohan, Summy and Kapil — in the final. They finished with their season’s best timing of 3 min 20.60 seconds. The gold was taken by Nigeria at 3:19.70 following a see-saw battle with Poland (3:19.80).


To put the young Indian quartet’s performance in perspective, the country's mixed race team in the same event at the Tokyo Olympics had registered a timing of 3:19.93, only less than a second faster than the timings recorded by the juniors. “We are very proud of our performance and hope that it inspires more and more people to take up the sport,” Priya said later.

India went into the final on a confident note, having qualified the second fastest with a season best timing of 3:23.36, which they later bettered in the summit clash. India made one change in the quartet which had helped them advance, replacing Abdul Razzaq with Barath in the final.

Federation Cup

junior champion Barath gave them a good start, taking them to the second place at the end of the first leg, behind Nigeria. But after that the Poland runners took the second spot. But the next three Indian contestants – Priya, Summy and Kapil – mainted their position to help the team finish on the podium.

The bronze capped a good day for India at the championship — four others Indians made it to the finals in their respective events. Priya Mohan cruised to the final in 400m while

Amandeep Singh Dhaliwal

also advanced in shot put. In javeling throw, two Indians — Kunwer Ajai Raj Singh Rana and Jay Kumar — progressed to the final. Summy also raced in the 400m, but failed to qualify for the final. The duo of Priya and Summy had to race three 400m races back to back. “There was little time to recover. But somehow we overcame it and came up with a good performance,” Priya said.

In shot put, Amandeep Singh Dhaliwal just made it to the final when he finished 6th in his qualification round Group B and 11th overall. The top 12 in the qualification rounds made it to the final. Amandeep had throws of 17.92m, 17.75m and 17.90m in his three attempts with the first being his best. The Indian, has a personal best of 19.15m, which he recorded in Punjab’s Sangur earlier this month.