India’s Kunwer Ajai Raj Singh Rana and Jay Kumar finished fifth and sixth respectively in the final of the men’s javelin throw final at the World Athletics U20 championships in Nairobi, Kenya on Friday.

Ajai Rana was briefly in the medal positions when he sent the javelin a distance of 73.68m with his fourth attempt. That took him to third in the final but Nigeria’s Chinecherem Nnamdi soon overtook the Indian and later Poland’s Eryk Kolodziejczak moved into the fourth spot. Rana, whose personal best of 74.75m would have put him in the top three, could not improve his best throw with the fifth and sixth attempts.

Jay Kumar also made the cut to the top eight and improved his position to sixth with a throw of 70.74m with his final attempt.

The event, which saw Neeraj Chopra win gold in 2016 with a U20 World Record, was won by Finland’s Janne Laspa with Ukraine’s Artur Felfner coming second.

In women’s 100m hurdles, Nandini Agasara finished with a time of 14.16s in her semifinal race and came sixth. It was slight improvement from her timing in the heat (14.18s) in which she finished fourth and qualified automatically. She did not progress to the final.

In the men’s 3000m steeplechase heats, Sumit Joliya finished with a timing of 9:49.23. It was the 11th best in his heat and placed him 22nd overall.

Earlier in the day, India’s Shaili Singh qualified for the women’s long jump final with a chart-topping effort of 6.40m.

Shanmuga Srinivas Nalubothu clocked 21.33 seconds in the men’s 200m heats – his second fastest time over the distance this year – but that was not good enough to take him to the semifinals.

Tejas Shirse finished fifth in his 110m hurdles heat race with a time of 13.87 seconds to make an early exit while Pooja crashed out in women’s 1500m as she ended 11th in her heat in a time of 4:37.85.