India At Asian Games 2023, Women's 400m Hurdles: Vithya Ramraj Equals PT Usha's 39-Year-Old National Record

Indian athlete Vithya Ramraj delivered a stellar performance in her 400m hurdles heat at the Hangzhou Asian Games on Monday, equalling PT Usha's 39-year-old national record with a personal best effort of 55.42s. With the effort, Vithya topped her heat and qualified for the final. The mark of 55.42s was what Usha had set at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where she had missed out on a medal by one-hundredth of a second. Ravi Sinchal Kaveram Theetharamada, however, missed out on qualifying for the final after finishing fifth in her heat with an effort of 58.62s. (Medal Tally | Schedule | Full Coverage | Sports News)

In men's 400m hurdles, Santhosh Kumar Tamilarasan and Yashas Palaksha qualified for the final after finishing in second position with a timing of 49.28s and 49.61s in their respective heats.

Meanwhile, India's high-jump specialist and decathlete Tejaswin Shankar produced a season-best effort in shot put to be placed fifth in the overall standings with two events left in men's decathlon.

The 24-year-old, who had won a bronze at the Commonwealth Games in high jump last year, came up with an effort of 13.39m in shot put to be at the fifth place.

He also produced a personal best effort of 11.12m to register a fourth place finish in the 100m race, while topping the standings in long jump with an effort of 7.37m.

Tejaswin now has 2428 points in the overall standings. He amassed 903 points from long jump, 834 from 100m race and 691 in shot put.

He will participate in high jump and 400 race events later in the day.

Sandesh Jesse and Sarvesh Anil Kushare produced identical scores of 2.10m to qualify for men's high jump final after finishing at the ninth place in the list of 12 best performers.

Sandesh and Sarvesh finished at sixth and fourth in group A and group B qualifiers respectively.

In the men's 800m heat, Mohammed Afsal Pulikkalakath finished at the top of his heat with a timing of 1:46:79s, while Krishnan Kumar was second in his heat with a timing of 1:49:45s. Both qualified for the finals.