Indian rowing duo of Kiran Yalamanchi and Bijender Singh showed tremendous grit as they edged out their rivals from Kazakhstan to bag the bronze medal in Men's Lightweight Double Sculls event of the Asian Games in Doha on Wednesday.
Japanese duo of Takahiro Suda and Hideki Omoto walked away with the gold with a timing of 3:19.29s, while the Thai pair of Ruthanaphol Theppiubal and Anupong Thain finished with the Silver at 3:19.92s. The Indian duo timed 3:26.01 to win the bronze, pipping Kazakh rowers Ivan Kharitonov and Artyom Issupov (3:30.88).
It was a neck-to-neck battle for the third place between the Indian and Kazakh pairs.
The Kiran-Bijender pair took 1:38.54s for the first 500m but breathing down their neck were the Kazakhs who timed 1:38.99.
The Indians, however, kept pushing hard in the final 500m and that made all the difference as Kiran and Bijender timed 1:47.47s, ahead of their rivals who needed 1:51.89s for the second half of the race.
