India's Women Win the 4x400m Relay, India's First Athletics Gold of the Games

India's women's 4x400m relay team won gold at the Asian Games on Tuesday, clocking 3:29.69 to beat Bahrain by just over half a second. It's India's first athletics gold of these Games, and it extends a streak that goes back to 1998 — India have won at least one athletics gold at every Asian Games since.

Kiran Pahal ran the opening leg, then Poovamma Machettira, then Prachi Choudhary, with Vithya Ramraj anchoring it home. Bahrain took silver in 3:30.21, China bronze in 3:31.02.

It's the third medal of these Games for Vithya Ramraj alone, across three different events in five days: mixed relay silver on the 24th, a 400m hurdles bronze — and a national record that had stood since P.T. Usha in 1984 — on the 28th, and now this gold on the 29th.

Prachi Choudhary had already won bronze in the individual 400m five days earlier, her first individual Asian Games medal after years as a relay regular. Poovamma Machettira, at 36 the most experienced of the four, was already a two-time Asian Games relay gold medallist from 2014 and 2018 before this one. Kiran Pahal, a 2024 Paris Olympian who trains largely without a sponsor, ran the leg that set it up.

India's women's team wasn't the only relay quartet in the mix on the day — the men's 4x400m team took bronze in a tight race decided by under a second, and the mixed 4x100m team added another bronze while breaking their own national record.