Guangzhou: The Indian women's 4x400m relay team, in a sensational burst, defended their gold medal in the Asian Games here Friday.

The victory gave India its fifth gold in athletics, and 13th overall. The women's relay team had given India its only gold in athletics at the 2006 Doha Games.

The quartet of Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose, Ashwini Chidananda and Mandeep Kaur, which won the gold in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, came on top here clocking 3:29.02 seconds.

Kazakhstan (Marina Maslyonko, Viktoriya Yalovtseva, Margarita Matsko, Olga Tereshkova) got the silver in 3:30.03 and China (Zhihui Zheng, Xiaoyin Tang, Lian Chen, Jingwen Chen) the bronze in 3:30.89.

Manjeet gave India a good start and Sini maintained the pace with a good run before handing the baton to Ashwini.

Ashwini, who won the gold in 400m hurdles, steamed ahead with rapid strides to break away from the pack and left Kazakh Margarita way behind.

It was left to Mandeep to give it a winning finish, but the tall Kazakh runner Olga came from behind to lead briefly. Seasoned Mandeep, however, had enough fuel to pull to outpace Olga in the last 50m.

A PRODUCTIVE 14th DAY AT GUANGZHOU

Earlier, the men's and women's kabaddi teams expectedly maintained their supremacy by clinching the gold.

While the kabaddi teams did not sweat much to keep their reputation intact in rather lopsided finals, long distance runners Preeja Sreedharan and Kavita Raut had their moment of glory by winning the silver and bronze medals respectively in the women's 5000 m event.

Also, rollersports fetched India a couple of unexpected bronze medals with Anup Kumar Yama bagging one in men's single free skating before combining with Avani Panchal to finish third in the pairs skating event.

With the addition of six more medals, India's medal tally climbed to a record 12 gold, 15 silver and 32 bronze (total 58), the biggest ever haul in the Asian Games so far. India's best medal haul till date was recorded in the 1982 Games in Delhi when they had won 13 gold, 19 silver and 25 bronze for an overall tally of 57.

With a few more gold medals expected in the second session, particularly from the boxers, India will be looking for a top-five finish in the Games.

India had finished tenth on the medals table in the last edition of the Games in Doha with a tally of 10-17-26. Much was expected from the kabaddi teams to provide the boost to the gold haul and they did not disappoint.

The men's kabaddi team maintained their impeccable track record by winning the gold medal for the sixth time on the trot, demolishing Iran with a facile 37-20 margin what turned out to be a lop-sided contest.

The script unfolded on expected lines for the women's kabaddi team also as they completed a memorable Asian Games debut by clinching the gold medal with a comprehensive win over Thailand in the final.

The Indians beat Thailand 28-14 in a dominating performance to clinch the inaugural women's kabaddi gold of the Asian Games. The Indians led 17-7 at half-time after Thailand failed to secure a single lona against India's two.

The Indian team also got a couple of bonus points in the opening half.