After 44 years, India has its first medal in marathon at the Asian Games, and it’s a silver medal from Sawan Barwal.
The Indian Army havildar from Himachal Pradesh finished second in the men’s marathon at the Aichi-Nagoya Games on Saturday with a personal best timing of 2:11:37. India last won a marathon medal in the mega event at the 1982 Delhi edition of the Games. In fact, all of India’s medals in this discipline have come on the Indian routes.
Hosur Kukkappa Seetharan won the bronze in 1982, and the only other two marathon medals came in 1951, also held in New Delhi — Chota Singh clinched gold and Surat Singh Matur bagged bronze.
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The 28-year-old was in the lead pack until the 35km mark before opening up a gap over the final seven kilometres to finish 36 seconds ahead of China’s Peiyou Feng, who won the bronze medal. Ichitaka Yamashita clinched gold in front of his home crowd in 2:10:49, finishing 48 seconds ahead of Barwal.
Kartik Karkera, the other Indian runner in the event, finished 17th among 19 runners.
The historic medal comes less than six months after Barwal achieved another landmark in the Netherlands. For nearly half a century, the late Shivnath Singh held India’s marathon record of 2:12:00, set in 1978. Barwal broke that mark on his debut at the NN Marathon Rotterdam, a World Athletics Gold Label Road Race, clocking 2:11:58.
Barwal, who switched from long-distance running to the marathon on the suggestion of fellow Army personnel and mentor Mohammed Yunus Khan, finished 20th in that event, where he fell about 150 metres from the finish line before recovering to break the record.
On Saturday, he lowered that record by another 21 seconds.
India now has 24 medals at the Asian Games, comprising two gold, 10 silver and 12 bronze medals, with 10 of those medals coming from shooting.