Aarti won a bronze in women's 10000m race walk event with national U20 record time.© Athletics Federation of India
Aarti won a bronze in women's 10000m race walk event with national U20 record time to open India's medal account in the World U20 Athletics Championships on Friday. The 17-year-old Aarti clocked 44 minutes 39.39 seconds to finish third in the gruelling event on the penultimate day of competitions. Aarti broke her own earlier national record of 47:21.04 which she had clocked in March while winning gold in the National Federation Cup U20 Championships in Lucknow. Chinese race walkers Zhuoma Baima (43:26.60) and Meiling Chen (44:30.67) took the gold and silver respectively.
On Thursday night, Pooja Singh rewrote the national U20 women's national record in high jump to enter the final with a ninth-place finish in the qualification round.
The 17-year-old, who hails from Fatehbad district of Haryana, cleared a height of 1.83m to finish second in qualification round group B and ninth overall and qualify for the final to be held on Saturday.
Daughter of a mason, Pooja broke her own national U20 record of 1.82m set last year in Korea while winning a silver medal at the Asian U20 Championships.