Indian men’s, women’s team both win gold

Tenjin Dolma gets silver; Saurav Ranjan, Aarti Zanwar both win bronze

India’s Amar Singh Devanda broke the national record in 100 kilometre run at the IAU 100 km Asia & Oceania Championship held on November 22-23, 2025 at Bangkok, Thailand.

He also won the individual gold medal. He is the first Indian ultrarunner to finish a 100 km race in sub-seven hours.

Amar’s picture from another event

Amar finished the 100 km distance in a timing of six hours, 59 minutes and 37 seconds, smashing the existing national record of 7:04:52 set by Vipul Kumar at the IAU 100 km World Championships held at Bernau, Berlin in 2022.

Amar now holds three national records – 100 km, 12-hour run as well as 24-hour run. He had set the 24-hour national record of 272.537 km in April 2024.

Finishing in third position in the men’s individual race was Saurav Ranjan, who secured a bronze medal with a timing of 7:23:02. Geeno Antony finished in fourth position with a timing of 7:34:57.

India’s men as well as the women’s team won the team gold medal also.

At the IAU events, the team position is decided by the finishing performance of the first three runners of each country.

The combined timing of the first three Indian runners was 21:57:37 hours, the fastest finish in team performance. Australia won silver and Thailand won the bronze medal.

“Great performance, we did quite amazingly well. We went to Thailand with some worries about the weather. Therefore, our runners started conservatively,” said Santhosh Padmanabhan, Coach and Team Manager for the Indian team.

Four of the runners at the Championships had represented the country in the IAU 24 Hour World Championships held in Albi, France in October 2025. “For these athletes, I had reduced the mileage in training and focussed more on speed. They had not fully recovered and among them Geeno Antony particularly. So Geeno was not to push too much here in Thailand,” Santhosh said. At Albi, Geeno topped the mens’ team among Indian athletes and finished in top 10 overall.

“For the first couple of laps, we wanted to gauge how the runners were responding to the weather. Amar was able to push well and by the time he finished 60 km, he felt he could target a sub-seven-hour finish. He covered the last few kilometers in sub-4 pace,” said Santhosh.

In the women’s race, Mel Aitken of New Zealand won the gold with a timing of 9:04:14.

India’s Tenzin Dolma secured the silver with a timing of 9:18:49 and Aarti Zanwar the bronze with a timing of 10:15:27.

The current national record for women’s 100 km is held by Jyoti Gawate at 8:20:07. Jyoti, an elite marathon runner, had set this record at the 2022 IAU 100 km World Championships held in Berlin.

Amar said he did not have much time for a focussed training for the 100 km championships. He recently participated in the 24-hour World Championship held at Albi, France in October 2025.

“We had an extensive training for the 24-hour championship. That training helped me for this 100 km run,” he said. The weather was quite humid but Amar was able to brave it, he said.

Weather was a major challenge for Tenzin Dolma. “Overall, the run went well but the humidity was quite high,” she said. Her training for this race did not go as well as she would have liked it. She lost many training days due to incessant rains and subsequent flooding in Himachal Pradesh, where she resides. “My house was completely damaged in the floods. I had to struggle a lot to get my house back to some semblance of normalcy,” she said.

Tenzin Dolma

Nevertheless, her finish of 9:18:49 is a huge improvement of her previous personal record of 9:40.

The Indian women’s team won the team gold with a combined timing of 29:54:38 hours. Rajni Singh was the third Indian finisher with a timing of 10:20:20 hours.

No Financial Support

Financial support for ultrarunners has not been easy. This time around, the athletes representing India had to support themselves for travel as well as stay in Bangkok. A couple of runners had to seek financial loans to fund their travel, enquiries revealed.

A couple of runners had to drop out of the competition due to lack of funds.

(The author, Latha Venkatraman, is an independent journalist based in Mumbai)

(With inputs from IAU)