Singh clinches India's first men's triple jump Gold in 48 years while Barman becomes 1st to bag top honours in heptathlete, Dutee finishes second in 100m
A dehydrated Arpinder Singh on Wednesday ended India's 48-year long wait for a Gold in triple jump at the Asian Games with an effort of 16.77m even as he had aimed at shattering the national record here.
Arpinder, who has been without a medal in multi-sporting events since winning a Bronze in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, produced a best jump of 16.77m which he came up with in his third attempt.
Ruslan Kurbanov of Uzbekistan took the Silver with a best jump of 16.62m while Shuo Cao of China was third with an effort of 16.56m.
Wednesday's mark of Arpinder was, however, well below his season best of 17.09m which he did during the National Inter-State Championships in June, which had put him at number three in the Asian rankings.
Arpinder has a personal best of 17.17m. He had finished fifth in the 2014 Asian Games.
India's last Asian Games Gold medal in men's triple jump had come in 1970 from Mohinder Singh Gill.
While, Swapna Barman on Wednesday created history by becoming the first Indian heptathlete to win an Asian Games Gold here, a feat he achieved despite competing with pain due to a toothache.
The 21-year-old Barman logged 6026 points from the seven events competed for two days. En route the title, she won the high jump (1003 points) and javelin throw (872 points) events and finished second-best in shot put (707 points) and long jump (865 points).
Her weakest events were 100m (981 points, 5th position) and 200m in which she finished seventh with 790 points.
Going into the 800m run, the last of the seven-event competition, Barman was leading China's Qingling Wang by 64 points. She needed a good run in the concluding event, in which she eventually finished fourth.
It was the same event after which she had collapsed during the Asian Athletics Championship last year in Bhubaneswar but despite finishing fourth today, she emerged a champion.
Another Indian in the fray, Purnima Hembram was 18 points behind Japan's Yuki Yamasaki, going into the 800m run, but she finished just ahead of Barman and overall fourth with 5837 points.
Qingling (5954) won the Silver and Yamasaki the Bronze medal with 5873points.
Before Barman, only Bengal's Soma Biswas and Karnataka's J J Shobha and Pramila Aiyappa had returned with a medal from the Asian Games.
Biswas and Shobha had finished two-three at both Busan Asian Games (2002) and the Doha Games (2006), while Pramila had won a Bronze at the Guangzhou edition.
Also, Dutee Chand joined her illustrious compatriots such as P T Usha in the list of athletes who have won more than one medal at the Asian Games as she added a Silver to her kitty after finishing second earlier in the women's 100m dash here on Wednesday.
She crossed the finishing line in 23.20 seconds, behind Bahrain's Edidiong Odiong who clinched the Gold in 22.96. The Bronze went to China's Wei Yongli (23.27).
It has been an outstanding show by the 22-year-old Odisha sprinter who was not allowed to compete in 2014-15 under the IAAF's hyperandrogenism policy due to which she missed the 2014 Commonwealth and Asian Games. She fought and won a case against this policy at the Court of Arbitration for Sports.
In a recent revision of the hyperandrogenism policy of the IAAF, Dutee has been left out of its purview.
legendary Usha had swept four Gold medals at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games, winning 200m, 400m, 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay. Jyotirmoyee Sikdar, (800m 1500m) had also won two medals at the at 1998 Bangkok Games.
Sunita Rani (1500m, 5000m ) also returned with two medals from the 2002 Busan Games.
However, India's Silver medal in the 4x400m mixed relay will not be upgraded to Gold after the country's protest against champions Bahrain was rejected by the Asian Games' Jury of Appeals for the athletics competition here on Wednesday.
India had lodged a protest, stating that a Bahraini runner had caused obstruction to Hima Das during the relay race in which India finished second after M R Poovamma frittered away a good 30m lead.
India's protest was admitted by the jury of appeals last night but was rejected on Wednesday.
"We presented our case and after due deliberation, the jury rejected our appeal. So the result stands, we are the Silver winner," an Indian team official said.