India continued to dominate the 12th South Asian Games held at Guwahati-Shillong ending the 6th day with 194 medals in total which includes 117 Gold, 61 Silver, and 16 Bronze. Sri Lanka and Pakistan remain a distant second and third respectively.
India’s rich gold haul continues as it already has 117 of the yellow metal in its kitty whereas the entire remaining teams could bag just 36 gold medals all total. Most of the Rio 2016 bound athletes continued their domination and a few games record been set up as well.
Indian Table Tennis contingent made a clean sweep bagging all 7 gold and 5 silver medals in the men and women’s doubles, mixed doubles, and men and women’s singles. With the backing of a vociferous crowd at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Sports Hall in Shillong, the home team made no mistake and to the delight of the crowd, most of the finals saw an All-India affair.
In Athletics, Neeraj Chopra(men’s javelin throw), Arokya Rajiv(men’s 400m), Arjun(discus throw), J Surendhar(men’s 110m hurdles), Gayathry(women’s 100m hurdles), Ankit Sharma(men’s long jump) and Sahana Kumari(women’s high jump) clinched the top honours.
The Indian Wushu contingent also brought home 11 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze at the end of the Wushu competition. The Indian men’s hockey team entered the finals defeating Sri Kanka 3-0 in the last group league match held at the Mohammad Tayabulla Hockey Stadium. Pakistan also thrashed Bangladesh 5-0 to be the second finalists.
Air Rifle specialist Apurvi Chandela of India won gold at the 10m event. She also teamed up ith Pooja Ghatkar and Elizabeth Susan Koshy to win the team gold in the event. Omkar Singh, prakash Nanjappa and Om Prakash won the gold in the men’s 50m Pistol team event.
In the tennis events, India stuck gold in the women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. In the men’s singles event, it will be a all India affair between Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan. In the Volleyball event, the gold went to India in both men’s and women’s categories. The Silver medal went to Sri Lanka in both the events.
Lankan swimmer Matthew Abeysinghe continued defying all odds to win a total of medals at the events including 7 gold. The star was asked about his expectation coming into the games and he quipped that initially he had hoped for 4-5 medals but was happy to shine for his country in the International meet. In other good news for Sri Lanka, Himasha Eashan and RMEK Rathnayaka became the fastest man and woman respectively of the 12th South Asian Games by bagging gold in the 100m event.
In the Kho-kho event held at the Tapesia Sports Complex, India won gold in both men’s and women’s events defeating Bangladesh 37-14 and 16-14 respectively. Nepal bagged the bronze medal in both the categories.
India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka continued performing well in Wrestling in various categories. Also the Badminton players from India did impressively. Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa eased to the semis of the event defeating Chandrika De Silva and Nadeesha Gayanthi of Sri Lanka.
All in all, this has been a very good outing for the Indians and they will hope so keep on winning more medals and make the country proud. A lot of youngsters are also showing glimpses of their potential and all steps must be taken to nurture their talent and make them ready for the future.