Shot putter Baliyan clinches India’s first athletics medal

Kiran Baliyan with her shot put bronze at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre yesterday. Pic/Ashwin Ferro

Kiran Baliyan became the first Indian woman to win an Asian Games medal in shot put event in 72 years as she picked up a bronze on the opening day of competitions here on Friday.

The 24-year-old Baliyan hurled the iron ball to a distance of 17.36m in her third attempt for her best effort of the day to open India's medal account.

Baliyan thus became only the second Indian to win a medal in women's shot put in Asian Games after Barbara Webster, an Anglo-Indian from then Bombay, won a bronze in the inaugural edition in New Delhi in 1951.

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Baliyan has a season's as well as personal best of 17.92m which she had produced while finishing second in the Indian Grand Prix 5 in Chandigarh on September 10.

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