The photo-finish judged Sutono the winner, which gave Indonesia their first athletics gold medal since Mohammed Sarengat's unique 100m and 110m hurdles gold in 1962. Sunita left clutching a silver looked bewildered at the turn of events.

For most of the 12 and-a-half lap, 5,000m race, Sutono did not even look a contender. In sweltering heat, Sunita, a bronze medallist in the 1,500m, and China's Wang Chunmei slugged it out, before the fast-finishing Indian girl broke away on the home straight. Sunita probably did not anticipate Sutono's unexpected charge and had started decelerating. She was unable to do anything as the Indonesian surged past and raised her arms ina victory salute and toppled over the line.

Sutono, clocked 15:54.45 while Sunita was timed in 15:45.47 and Wang Chunmei, the pre-race faded into the fourth spot with Mihciko Shimizu of Japan grabbed the bronze in 15:55.36. Sunita's time was an improvement on her own national mark 15:59.06 clocked in Calcutta last month.

China had their worst day, winning just two of seven gold medals handed out today. Damayanti Darsha completed a 200-400 double, while Koji Ito duly took his third gold medal with a blistering 200m run in 20.25 seconds, which while being a new Games mark was well off his personal best of 20.16s.

Quartet sight medal

Even without their main star, Paramjit Singh, India's first medallist in the men's 400m since 1982, the Indian foursome gave ample signs of fetching another medal from the 4x400m relay. With Lijo David, P Ramachandran, Dinesh Rawat and Jata Shankar running this evening, the Indians clocked a new national record time of three minutes 04.86 seconds, which was fivehundredths of a second better than old mark.

National record apart, the manner in which the Indians ran was heartwarming. They challenged the Japanese, who have rarely lost the 1,600m relay in Asia. The Japanese today fielded their top four Jun Osakada, Kenji Tabata, Kan Masayoshi and Shunji Karube, who did duty for them in Asian Championships in Fukuoka while winning the gold in 3:02.61s. Today the same four clocked 3:04.25.

India's medal hopes from this event received an unexpected boost, when Sri Lanka, who beat India to the bronze in the Asians, failed to make the final from the ten teams entered. Having rested their main runner, Sugath Tillkeratne, winner of the 400m and bronze medallist in 200m, they were on their way to the final when inexperienced W Wijetunge dropped the baton with 200m to go on the anchor leg.

Lekha Thomas became one of India's few failures. She had a best of 13.05m and ended ninth.

Usha cries foul: PTI adds PT Usha has run her last race in the Games with the Indianthinktank deciding to field Jincy Philips in her place for the 4x400m women's relay to be run tomorrow. The 34-year-old Usha today alleged that certain coaches in the squad here are playing politics. She said her recent spate of injuries had been ``caused'' as she was forced to train under the Russian coach Valery against her wishes.