Indian Olympic athlete Arpinder Singh brings the tenth gold medal for India on 11th day of Jakarta Palembang 2018 Asian Games. The 25-year-old touched 16.77 mark to bag the gold medal in Men's Triple Jump event. The Amritsar-born sportsperson got better off Ruslan Kurbanov of Uzbekistan with 16.62 mark and Shuo Cao of China with 16.56 mark who bagged the silver and bronze medal respectively. Arpinder Singh’s gold medal feat took India’s medal tally at Asian Games 2018 to 54 including 11 gold, 20 silver and 23 bronze. India is currently placed ninth on the medal table and team standings. Asian Games Medal Tally 2018 Updated: Check India's Medal Tally in Current Table and Country-Wise Medal Standings.

Arpinder Singh got off to a bad start with a failure in first attempt. In attempt 2, he touched 16.58 mark. However, it was in the third attempt of 16.77 mark that eventually proved to be a winner for him and India. In fact, Arpinder had two more failures in fifth and sixth attempt, but none of his opponents could better the mark set by the Punjab athlete earlier.

His father who played kabaddi for Indian army, Arpinder began the sport at the age of eight. In an interview with Sportskeeda, he was quoted saying, "I started as a 100m runner during my youth days. It was my coach who asked me to try triple jump. I tried it out for six months on the side, and realised I got really good at it. So I shifted my entire focus onto that. However, it wasn't that easy in the beginning."

The gold medal by Arpinder Singh is fourteenth overall for India in athletics. The other gold medallist in athletics are Manjit Singh in men's 800m, Tajinderpal Singh in men's shot put, Neeraj Chopra in men's javelin throw and Swapna Barman in women's heptathlon.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 29, 2018 07:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).