KOCHI: Asian Games bronze medallist Vithya Ramraj sailed smoothly over the 400m hurdles to win gold and improve the meet record on the third day of the National Federation Senior Athletics Championships here on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old Tamil Nadu athlete clocked 56.04 seconds to better the previous meet record of 57.21 seconds clocked by Saritaben Gayakwad in 2019 in Patiala.

She also breached the Asian Championships qualification time of 57.80 seconds set by Athletics Federation of India.

Anu R (58.26 seconds) of Kerala and Ashwini R (1:02.41) of Tamil Nadu took the silver and bronze respectively.

Vithya had also won silver in women's 400m race the previous day.

However, men's 400m hurdle gold winner Yashas P of Karnataka missed the Asian Championships qualification time of 49.19 seconds as he clocked 49.32 seconds on Wednesday.

"There was no competition in the race, which was why I missed the Asian qualification mark," Yashas said after the race.

In the absence of Avinash Sable, Sunil Joliya Jinabhai of Gujarat 8:43.82 won the men's 3000m steeplechase gold while Vikram Singh (8:44.30) of Army and Rohit Verma (8:44.80) of Haryana took home the silver and bronze respectively.

In the women's 3000m steeplechase, Manju Ajay Yadav of Madhya Pradesh won gold with a time of 10:34.08, while Nikita (10:51.96) of Rajasthan and Chanchal (11:10.40) of Haryana took the silver and bronze respectively.