Taipei, 12 June: Punjab girl Navjeet Kaur Dhillon has thrown the iron ball to 14.99m to clinch bronze medal in 16th Asian Junior Athletic championships here today.
The 19-year-old Navjeet won the medal with her sixth throw of 14.99m that saw her pull ahead of Mina Lee (Korea), Aya Ota (Japan) and Ru-Ching Chiang (Chinese Taipei).
The gold and silver medals were bagged by China’s Jia-Qi Xu (16.50m) and Ning-Yue Wang (15.05m).
Having set a national mark of 15.89m during the Junior Federation Cup at Chennai last month, Navjeet was earlier expected to win the top spot in the biennial meet for junior athletes of the continent. However a mess-up in visa application delayed the departure of the Indian team in Delhi, that eventually caused heavily on some of top medal contenders including ace sprinter Dutee Chand as well as decathletes Ankit Saini and Amolak Singh.
Dutee Chand missed morning’s 100m heats while Saini and Singh were non-starters in the decathlon. However when the Indian athletes reached the venue for the after-noon session straight from the airport, they did so without taking any food at all.
Navjeet’s first two throws landed out of sector as she has no time for a training session and hence lost the feel of the ground. However she managed to register 13.34m on her third round. Navjeet improved it to 13.56m on the fifth after made another foul in the fourth round. Trailing at sixth place in that stage, she realized it is now-or-never for her to make the podium.
Navjeet decided to concentrate fully on her final throw and delivered it to a respectable 14.99m to the joy of everyone concerned. Her throw, however missed the silver medal by just 6 cm.