New Delhi : Sarvesh Anil Kushare came agonisingly close to winning the gold medal but lost the high jump final on countback to Fu Chao-hsuan of Chinese Taipei. That summed up India’s frustrating day in track and field after another gold medal contender Ancy Sojan also settled for silver in the long jump, after she was surpassed by China’s Huang Yingying in the sixth and final jump (6.55m to 6.53m) at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya.
Not to forget, Shankar was competing in back-to-back major championships, having won bronze at the CWG in August. Still, it was quite an achievement for Kushare to finish ahead of South Korea’s Woo Sanghyeok, the most accomplished jumper in the field with two World Championships silver medals and a Diamond League Final title. The competition, however, was tougher and closer, and it showed in the overall scores.
Woo took bronze with a jump of 2.22m. Maruyama, bronze medallist in the previous edition, aggregated 8,123 points for gold, while Chen took silver (8,012 pts). Shankar’s score was much better than his 7,666 points in Hangzhou, which had fetched him silver.
For Kushare, who has been showing steady improvement, the medal means a lot. He has been one of India’s most consistent athletes over the last few years. This is his first Asian Games medal, after finishing fourth in 2023 Hangzhou. He set the national record of 2.31m at the National Inter-State Meet this year, reached the World Championships final – he finished joint sixth with a jump of 2.28m – took bronze at the Commonwealth Games and finished third in the Monaco Diamond League this season.
His national record of 8,057 points also came this year at the Inter-State meet in Ranchi. “I did four decathlons this year. I’ve been going on since 30th of January but not blaming anybody.
“It was more of losing a silver than winning a bronze,” Tejaswin said. I had to do it and I needed to get that performance,” he said.
