By: ENS & Agencies

Haryana’s wrestlers demolished their opponents to sign off with a whopping 18 gold medals at the end of the fourth day of the National Games on Wednesday. The medal spurt helped Haryana overtake Services Sports Control Board (SSCB) at the top of the medals table. Haryana’s wrestlers ended their Games campaign with 18 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze medals, taking the state’s overall count to 33 (21 gold, 8 silver, 4 bronze).

Haryana took all five gold medals on offer on Wednesday. Rajendra Kumar claimed the men’s 59kg Greco-Roman gold after beating Delhi’s Ravinder. The bronze-medallists in this event were Maharashtra’s Vikram Krushant and Chhattisgarh’s Nitin.

Another gold for Haryana came from Amit Dhankar, who beat SSCB’s Arun to emerge champion in the men’s 70kg freestyle final. Yogesh (80kg Greco roman), Anita Sheoran (63kg freestyle) and Priyanka (53kg freestyle) added to the tally, helping the side to sign off.

If Haryana dominated wrestling, Services were going strong in shooting with London Olympics silver-medallist Vijay Kumar, after emerging on top in both the team and individual 25m centre fire pistol events on Tuesday, notching up a third gold on Wednesday. Vijay combined with Gurpreet Singh and Omkar Singh to ensure a numero uno finish for SSCB in the 25m standard pistol men’s team competition.

However, the star shooter had to settle for a bronze in the individual event with a score of 565. The individual gold was clinched by his SSCB teammate Gurpreet Singh (572) with Madhya Pradesh’s Mahendra Singh (568) fetching the silver. Services dominated the 10m rifle event as well with Chain Singh Manhas, who won the 50m rifle prone gold on Tuesday, adding a second yellow metal to his kitty. Manhas scooped the gold by a whisker totalling 205.9 against Uttar Pradesh’s Akhil Sheoran, who shot a score of 205.8.

UP’s Sathyam Chauhan — was a distant third after scoring 183.5. However, Haryana pipped them in the team competition with the trio of Sanjeev Rajput, Prasanth and Deepak Kumar clinching the gold ahead of Manhas, Ravi Kumar and Ashok Chavan. The bronze went to the Uttar Pradesh team of Akhil Sheron, Sathyan Chauhan and Rajendra Rai.

Games round up

TN clean sweep in squash

The squASH competition saw complete domination by Tamil Nadu as all the finalists in both the men’s and women’s competition belonged to the state. First up was women’s singles, in which the seasoned Joshana Chinappa did not have much trouble in sailing past Lakshya R 11-5 11-8 11-4 to grab the gold medal. The bronze medals went to yesterday’s losing semifinalists – Urwashi Joshi of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh’s Sachika Ingale. In the men’s summit clash, Saurav Ghosal rallied to beat Harinder Pal Singh Sandhu after conceding the initial advantage. He won the match 4-11, 11-4, 11-8, 11-6 to expectedly walk away with the top honours, while the bronze-medallists were Delhi’s Gaurav Nadrajog and Tamil Nadu’s Ravi Dixit.

Kumar bags silver

In gymnastics, 2010 Commonwealth Games and 2010 Asian Games bronze-medallist Ashish Kumar, who is on road to recovery after being laid low by injuries, picked up a silver medal in the men’s individual all-round event. Ashish (77.3500 points) was outshone by SSCB’s Rajesh Kumar Batra(78.0500 points), while local favourite Shinoj took the bronze medal with a score of 76.2500. In the women’s all round individual event, Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Dipa Karmakar gave Tripura its first National Games gymnastics gold by totaling 52.1000.