Haryana's Sharwan Kharb lived up to the occasion as he brought home a silver medal in the 10000m run on the second day of 16th Asian junior athletics championships at Taipei Municipal Stadium here today.
Running a tactical race with Hazuma Hattori of Japan, who is holding a much superior personal best time of 28:55.31, Sharwan remained with the leader right from the start.
However, he could not match with the increasing pace of the Japanese runner and gave away in the waning stages of the race to finish second in 31:52.37, while Hattori annexed the gold in 31:10.60.
Yaser Salem Bagharab of Yemen, running in barefoot, took the bronze medal clocking 32:22.42.
The second medal for India came from shot putter Shakti Solanki.
Throwers from Iran took the top two spots in this event. Shahin Mehrdelan fouled five of his six attempts. However his only valid throw on third round that landed at 18.85m fetched him the gold from teammate Shahin Jafari (18.64m).
Solanki, who had recorded a personal best of 17.93m with the 6 kg iron ball during his silver medal win at Junior Federation Cup at Chennai last month, could manage only 17.09m this evening for a bronze medal in Taipei.
Punjab's burly Navtejdeep Singh, who had an amazing throw of 18.56m at Chennai, abstained in the meet.
Haryana girl Pinki Kumari finished outside the podium in 1,500m as she finished fifth out of six runners with a time of 4:37.53, much against her national junior record 4:27.26 recorded at Chennai.
North Korean Song Mi clocked 4:28.38 to win the gold from pre-race favourite Yuki Nakamura of Japan (4:28.75) and Xu Shuang-shung of China (4:28.78).
Two other Haryana athletes also had their events today. Race walker Karan Rathi, who clocked 46:18.54 under hot sun in Chennai, was even slower at Taipei (49:30.54) in his fifth place finish.
Japan's Fumitaka Oikawa walked the 10,000m distance in 44:08.25 for the top spot. Javelin thrower Sharmila Kumari finished sixth (46.36m) while another Japanese, Shiori Touma, nailed the gold in 55.75m.
