Rhine-Ruhr, Essen (Germany) | Steeplechaser Ankita came up with a blistering run to clinch silver in the gruelling 3000m event with a personal-best time of 9:31.99 seconds, as India made a promising start on the final day of the World University Games here on Sunday.

On a day when several Indian athletes are in contention in track events, 23-year-old Ankita, a second-year social sciences student, shaved nearly seven seconds from her personal best time of 9:39.00 seconds to finish a few milliseconds behind Finland's Ilona Maaria Mononen, who timed 9:31.86.

Adia Budde of Germany took the bronze, clocking 9:33.34 seconds.

On Friday, Ankita had topped Heat 1 by clocking 9:54.79 seconds and secured her place in the final. It was a massive 22-second improvement, which propelled Ankita to second place in the competitive race.

With the 3000m steeplechase medal in the morning session, India have taken their tally to two gold, four silver and three bronze in the showpiece event.

The Indian women's 4x400m relay team came up with a season's best time of 3:35.08 seconds, but it was not good enough for a medal, as the quartet of Anakha Bijukumar, Devyaniba Zala, Rashdeep Kaur and Rupal finished fifth, clocking 3:35.08 seconds.

The German team, despite a poor reaction time, won the gold with a time of 3:29.68 seconds.

Indian athletes, traditionally strong in the relay events, will get a chance to further better their medals tally when they compete in the men's 4x400m and 4x100m, and women's 4x100m relay events.

Indian race walkers, however, had a dismal showing, with none of them even finishing in the top-10 in the men's and women's sections, though a few came up with personal or season best timings.

Rahul clocked a season's best 1:26:34 seconds but finished 20th in the men's 20km race walk final with the gold going to Andrea Cosi of Italy with a World University Games record of 1:19:48 seconds.

Gaurav Kumar (1:28:44) was 25th, Sachin Singh Bohra (1:32:03) 28th and Sanjay Kumar (1:46:21) finished last among 31 competitors.

In women's 20km race walk, India's Sejal Anil Singh came up with a personal best of 1:35:21 seconds to finish 15th, with the gold going to Australia's Elizabeth McMillen in a WUG record time of 1:28:18 seconds.

Mansi Negi (1:41:12) was 20th, Shalini (1:48:07) 23rd, and Mahima Choudhary (1:55.49) 25th and last among the finishers.