South Korea dominated the field on the second day of the Hero Cycles Asian cycling championships, at the Indira Gandhi Sports Complex velodrome, by bagging three gold medals and one silver. The East Asian nation now leads the medals tally, followed by Hong Kong with two wins and one runner-up spot.
For India, however, it was a largely disappointing day. The host’s biggest hope on Friday, Jashnjeet Kaur, lost her bronze medal play-off to Kazakhstan’s Yekaterina Yuraitis in the women’s junior 2km individual pursuit. In an eight-lap race, the 16-year-old cyclist led her opponent for the first five rounds before being overtaken by the Kazakh.
Jashnjeet, though, was satisfied by her showing at her first international championships. “I performed better in the play-off (than the qualifying round on Thursday). I need to work more on my strength. The foreign coaches guide their cyclists at the end of every lap while here, the coach only tells me the time at the end of the race,” asserted the teenager.
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Jashnjeet, who finished her race in almost two minutes and 41 seconds, added that her next target is to touch the 2:39 mark.
The teenager, however, can still win a bronze medal as India will meet Kazakhstan in the women’s junior 4km team pursuit play-off on Saturday.
Unfortunately, that was the lone bright spark for the Indian contingent as the rest of the riders produced a disappointing performance.
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India failed to qualify for the final of men’s (both categories) & women’s 4km team pursuit. Prabh Simran Singh (men’s junior sprint) and Chandrasekhar Rajesh (men’s sprint) will not participate in the round-of-16 of their respective events too.
There was further frustration for the host as Atul Kumar failed to finish the men’s 30km points race and did likewise later in the day, this time in the 25km madison with Sombir.
The results:
Men: 30km points race: 1. Ho Sung Cho (Kor) 39; 2. Ki Ho Choi (Hkg) 34; 3. Mohammad Rajablou (Iri) 34.
4km individual pursuit: 1. Sun Jae Jang (Kor); 2. Dias Omirzakov (Kaz); 3. Alireza Haghi (Iri).
25km madison: 1. Hong Kong 21; 2. South Korea 17; 3. Iran 6.
Women: 3km individual pursuit: 1. You Ri Kim (Kor); 2. Sakura Tsukagoshi (Jpn); 3. Li Jiujin (Chn).
Juniors: Men: 3km individual pursuit: 1. Magomed Mamedov (Kaz); 2. Kohei Suzuki (Jpn); 3. Mohamad Farid Razali (Mas). Women: 2km individual pursuit: 1. Yao Pang (Hkg); 2. Yi Ju Lin (Tpe); 3. Yekaterina Yuraitis (Kaz).