India’s star long-distance runner Gulveer Singh opened his outdoor track season with a 5,000m silver medal at the LA Track Festival on Saturday.

Gulveer clocked his new outdoor personal best of 13:03.93s to finish second and also breached the AFI qualifying standard for Commonwealth Games (13:10.64s)

He finished second behind Habtom Samuel (12:57.22s) of Eritrea in the final. With this, Samuel has also set a new record for the NCAA in this meet.

Gulveer missed out on his personal best of (12:59.77s) but has now taken the 5,000m Asian lead for the year, surpassing Bahrain’s Birhanu Balew (13:07.75s).

The 27-year-old will be aiming to improve his personal best to have a chance of a medal at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, among the powerhouse nations of Kenya and Ethiopia.

He has already breached the commonwealth mark for the 10,000m with a time of 27:24.18s at the Ten Championships in the USA in March this year.