Hyderabad: Paris World Championship bronze medallist Anju Bobby George, discus thrower Anil Kumar and heptathlete J J Sobha won gold medals as India scooped up nine medals from athletics at the inaugural Afro-Asian Games today (October 29).

It was India's best day at the Gachibowli Athletic Stadium which saw former world champion and veteran sprinter Frankie Fredericks adding to the star value of the Games. Fredericks, who last week triumphed at the All Africa Games, air-dashed to the city and later won the men's 200m gold in 20.57 seconds and anchored the Namibian team to gold in the 4x100 metre relay.

India's silver winners today were Saraswati Saha (women's 200m), Jasmine Kaur (10,000m) and Arun D'Souza (3000m steeple chase).

Finishing in third place to win the bronze were Jagdish Bishnoi (javelin) and Soma Biswas (heptathlon) and the men's 4x100 relay quartet of C T Durai, Sandeep Sarkaria, Piyush Kumar and Sanjay Ghosh.

Anju was satisfied with her performance today which was well below her personal best as well as her world championship mark of 6.70m.

Without straining her sinew, Anju leapt to a distance of 6.53 metres with a headwind of 0.7 metres per second. She had won the Busan Asian Games gold with an identical effort of 6.53m.

"I did not exert myself in view of lack of stiff competition and at the same time wanted to win the gold medal for India. I will be concentrating on my training in Bangalore for the Olympics after a month's stay at home," she said.

PTI