India slip to seventh spot
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Guangzhou, Nov. 15: India’s fancied shooters came a cropper on a disappointing third day of competitions in the 16th Asian Games that saw India slip to the seventh position on the medals table here on Monday.
With the addition of just a silver and bronze medal, India took their overall medals tally to one gold, four silver and three bronze to drop to seventh on the roster after being in the fifth position on the first two days.
Powerhouse China expectedly did the bulk of the gold collection to consolidate their position atop the table with a tally of 53-20-19 while South Korea (18-13-17) and Japan (13-25-23) were in the second and third positions, respectively.
It was a heart-breaking day for the large Indian contingent with star shooters like Gagan Narang and Tejaswini Sawant failing to come to terms with the windy conditions at the Aoti shooting range while the performance at the other venues also left much to be desired.
The shooters drew a blank with all of them failing to qualify, handicapped by windy conditions.
The paddlers endured a mixed day in the individual competitions with only Kumarsen Shamini making it to the second round of the mixed as well as women’s singles event.
In weightlifting, India’s medal hope K. Ravi Kumar failed to live up to expectations as he finished fifth with a below-par performance in the men’s 69kg weightlifting.
Ravi Kumar would have won a medal had he repeated his 321kg effort which fetched him a gold in the Commonwealth Games but he could only lift 311kg (141+170) to finish fifth.
Amid the gloom, Grandmaster Sasikiran Krishnan continued his unbeaten run with two wins and a draw to sit at joint second after the seventh round and remain in contention for a medal in the chess competition.
India’s first woman world champion in shooting, Tejaswini Sawant, surprisingly drew a blank as she failed to even qualify for the finals of the 50m rifle prone event, finishing 11th with a score of 588 in the 50m rifle prone qualifiers, way below the top score of 595 notched up by eventual gold medallist Chengyi Wang of China.
The disappointment continued for India in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol event with the team of Rahul, Gurpreet Singh and Vijay Kumar finishing fourth with a total of 1711.
In swimming, Virdhawal Khade narrowly missed out on a medal and ended up fourth in the 50m freestyle event just 0.03 seconds behind the eventual bronze-medallist. The 19-year-old Khade, who qualified with the fifth best timing of 22.98sec, clocked 22.87sec in the finals.
Ashish Kumar finished a disappointing 23rd in a 24-participant field in the final of the men’s individual all-round artistic gymnastics competition while Sagolsem Somorjit finished a dismal last in the men’s all-round nangun wushu competition.
On the basketball court, though, India came back strongly in the third and fourth quarters to beat Afghanistan 83-76 in a closely contested match to qualify for the group stages.
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