Hangzhou, Sept 25: India started their medal hunt in the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou with their rowers and women shooters bagging five medals on Sunday, though a gold eluded them on the first day on which medals were in the offing.
The rowers claimed two silver and one bronze medal while the shooters claimed a silver in the women’s 10m Air Rifle Team Competition and a bronze in the 10m air rifle individual competition with Ramita Thapar finishing third. The Indian men’s football team qualified for the Round of 16 with a 1-1 draw with Myanmar while the boxers made a winning start with two-time World Champion Nikhat Zareen scoring a dominant win against the same player she defeated in the World final in March this year. Srihari Nataraj and the women’s 4x100m freestyle team reached their respective finals but could not get into the medals bracket — Srihari finishing 6th in the men’s 100m backstroke in 54.48 seconds while the quartet of Dhinidhi Desinghu, Maana Patel, Janhvi Choudhary and Shivanghi Sarma clocked 3:54.66 to finish seventh in the final. The day, however, belonged to the rowers and women rifle shooters as their efforts helped India to make an appearance at the 7th place in the medals tally with five medals — three silver and two bronze. The rowers bagged the first medal — a silver — when Olympians Arvind Singh and Arjun Lal Jat finished second in the Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls final at the Fuyang Water Sports Centre. The experienced pair, who had reached the semifinals at the Tokyo Olympic Games, ended the Lightweight Men’s Double Sculls Final in 6 minutes 20.18 seconds to take silver behind the Chinese duo — Junje Fan and Man Sun, who completed the course in 6:23.16. Uzbekistan’s Shakhzod Nurmatov and Sobirjon Safaroumov won the bronze medal in 6:32.47.
The Indian team of Jaswinder Singh, Bheem Singh, Punit Kumar, Ashish, Naresh Kalwaniya, Neeraj, Neetish Kumar, Charanjeet Singh and Dhananjay Pande won the silver medal in Men’s Coxed Eight while Babu Lal Yadav and Lekh Ram won bronze medal in the Men’s Pair events on Sunday, taking the Indian tally in rowing to three medals on the day. I
The Indian team of Jaswinder Singh, Bheem Singh, Punit Kumar, Ashish, Naresh Kalwaniya, Neeraj, Neetish Kumar, Charanjeet Singh and Dhananjay Pande won the silver medal in Men’s Coxed Eight while Babu Lal Yadav and Lekh Ram won bronze medal in the Men’s Pair events on Sunday, taking the Indian tally in rowing to three medals on the day. I