Neeraj Chopra congratulates race walker Amit Khatri
Tokyo Olympics javelin throw gold medallist Neeraj Chopra has advised Amit Khatri, who won silver in the men's 10,000m race walk event at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Nairobi on Saturday, to keep coming up with similar good performances for the country.
Khatri won the silver with a timing of 42:17.94. He was in lead for a good part of the race walk before being overtaken by Kenya's Heristone Wanyonyi in the last two laps.
Chopra, who became the first Indian to win gold medal in athletics and only the second from the country to bag an individual gold medal at the Olympics, two weeks back, told the 19-year-old Amit Khatri, "aise he aage badhiya performances dete raho desh ke liye" (continue to give similar good performances for the country).
"Congratulations Amit bhai for your wonderful performance!," he said in his tweet.
This is also India's second medal in the ongoing competition. Earlier on Wednesday, the Indian quartet of Bharat Sridhar, Priya H Mohan, Summy and Kapil had won the bronze medal in the 4x400m mixed relay final with a season-best timing of 3:20.60.
In January this year, Khatri had set a new national record while claiming men's 10000m race walk title at the Junior Federation Cup in Bhopal.
The young walker from Rohtak, Haryana finished the race in 40 minutes 40.97 seconds, improving on the existing national record of 40:37.78 by Akshdeep Singh and nearly half a minute ahead of state-mate Paramdeep Mor.
