Indian Dominataion - A highly productive day sees India clinch gold in wrestling, swimming and weightlifting

India clinched 14 gold, and five silver medals on a highly productive day to top the medals tally with an overall count of 19. Sri Lanka, despite having a higher overall medal count of 21, occupied the second spot in the table owing to a lesser tally of gold medals (4). 

Wrestlers were the stars for India, grabbing as many as five gold medals followed by the swimmers who clinched four gold and three silver medals. 

In women’s wrestling, Priyanka Singh claimed the top position in 48 kg, while Manisha won the gold in 60 kg and Archana Tomar clinched the yellow metal in 55 kg categories. 

The Indians created quite a splash in the pool as well picking up three of their four gold medals by clocking record times. Asian Games bronze-medallist Sandeep Sejwal (men’s 200 m breaststroke), Shivani Kataria (women’s 200 m freestyle) and the women’s 100 m freestyle relay team set new Games record timings on their way to gold while Damini Gowda added another yellow metal in women’s 100 m butterfly. Sejwal won his pet event in 2:20.66 sec to better his own record of 2:21.03 which he had set in the last edition in Dhaka in 2010 and defended his title. Kiran Jasinghe of Sri Lanka and Mohd Shariful Islam came second and third in 2:26.17 and 2:26.99 respectively. 

India established early dominance in the weightlifting competition as well by notching up three gold medals on the first day of competitions. Saikhom Mirabai Chanu, Harshdeep Kaur and Gururaja bagged the yellow metal for India. Chanu, opened the medal a count for India in weightlifting in women’s 48 kg weight category. She lif ted a total of 169 kg (79 kg in snatch + 90 kg in clean and jerk). 

Indian cyclists on Sunday added a gold, a silver and a bronze medal to continue their dominance. Lidiyamol Sunny and Tongbram Manorama Devi bagged a gold and silver in women’s 40 km criterium event on the second day of cycling events. Sunny accumulated 30 points to bag the top spot, while Manorama secured 26 points as Indians returned one-two for the third time in a row. 

India today suffered a major disappointment as the country’s top squash players Saurav Ghosal and Harinder Pal Singh Sandhu lost to arch-rivals Pakistani player in the individual men’s semifinals. 

Top seed Ghosal was out of sorts in his 4-11, 5-11, 12-10, 5-11 loss to Farhan Zaman while Sandhu did a shade better before conceding the match in the fourth game in favour of his rival second seed Nasir Iqbal, citing a right hamstring injury. Sandhu was trailing at 7-11, 14-12, 7-11, 6-6. 

In the women’s event, however, ace player and top seed Joshna Chinappa easily defeated her Pakistani rival Sadia Gul 11-9, 11-7, 11-5 in the semifinals. Joshna will meet a player from Pakistan in the final on Monday.