Boxers, shooters' golden sweep keeps India on top at SAG
Devendro beats Pak's Mohib Ulla in final
Source: The Sangai Express / PTI
Guwahati, February 15 2016:
The boxers hardly broke a
sweat to scoop all the seven
gold medals up for grabs, while
shooters ended their campaign
with an outstanding tally of 25
gold medals to ensure that
India's reign at the top
remained unhindered in the
12th South Asian Games on
Monday.
On the penultimate day of
competitions, the Indian con-
tingent continued to be
perched at the top with 289
medals (173 golds, 86 silvers
and 30 bronzes).
Sri Lanka were second on
the table with 174 medals (25
gold, 59 silver and 90 bronze,
followed by Pakistan (90
medals = 11 gold, 33 silver
and 47 bronze).
Besides, the boxers and
shooters' good show, the In-
dian women's football team
also won the gold medal,
defeating Nepal 4-0 in the
summit clash.
The boxers were the stars
of the show in Shillong with
all the 7 men in the final
notching up mostly compre-
hensive victories.
Commonwealth Games
silver-medallist
L Devendro
Singh (49kg)
began India's
gold rush when he thrashed
Pakistan's Mohib Ulla at the
SAI campus in North Eastern
Hill University on the out-
skirts of the city.
The London Olympics
quarterfinalist was adjudged
the winner on a split decision
of 2-1.
Madan Lal (52kg) and he
too prevailed over another
Pakistani opponent in
Mohammad Syed Asif to be
adjudged 3-0 winner.
Shiva Thapa (56kg) was
the fan favourite of the day
and he impressed the boister-
ous crowd to prevail over Sri
Lankan W Ruwan Thilina.
Against the aggressive
Lankan who was aiming for
head butts, Thapa had a de-
fensive strategy to avoid his
initial blows.
Vikas Krishan (775kg) put
up a brave front, fighting
through flu to down Paki-
stan's Tanveer Ahmed.
The Olympic medal pros-
pect prevailed over his
opponent with some feisty
uppercuts and was adjudged
3-0 winner unanimously.
Dheeraj Rangi, who had
secured a silver medal at the
World Military Games in
South Korea last year, de-
feated Pakistan's Ahmed Ali
in the 60kg gold medal bout.
Experienced boxer Manoj
Kumar, the 2010 Common-
wealth Games gold medallist,
was also adjudged winner in
a unanimous decision of 3-0
against Dinidu Saparamadu of
Sri Lanka in the 64kg cat-
egory.
Commonwealth Games
medallist in Mandeep Jangra
(69kg) survived a closely-
fought contest against Af-
ghanistan's Rahemi Alla Dad
to win 3-0.
At the shooting range in
Guwahati, Indian shooters
made yet another clean sweep
on the final day to sign off
with a staggering 25 out of
26 gold medals on offer.
Rio Olympics bound
Gurpreet Singh shot gold in
men's individual 25m rapid
fire pistol with a total of 28
hits on target, while Sweta
Singh grabbed another yellow
metal in women's individual
10m air pistol event with a
total score of 194.4 even
though she was shooting with
her spare gun at the
Kahilipara Shooting Range
here.
Another Olympics quota
holder Heena Sidhu had to be
content with the silver in the
women's 10m air pistol event
with a total score of 192.5,
while 18-year-old Chandigarh
shooter Yashaswini Singh
Deswal took the bronze.
India also took a gold each
in both the team events to
sweep aside any competition
from other countries in the
discipline.
India gave away just one
gold � to Bangladesh � in
the discipline.
The home
shooters ended the competi-
tion with 25 golds, 10 silvers
and 10 bronzes.
Bangladesh
are at a distant second with
one gold, three silver and
three bronze.
Bashir Ghulam Mustafa of
Pakistan took the silver with
24 hits on target while an-
other Indian Vijay Kumar,
who had won a silver in this
event in 2012 London Olym-
pics, bagged the bronze.
In the women's 10m air
pistol finals, there was tough
competition among the three
Indians, exchanging leads
among three of them.
But towards the end,
Sweta had established good
lead over her two Indian ri-
vals after young Deswal had
a horrendous series of two
shots of 8.3 and 7,7 which
cost her dear.
Sidhu was not at her best
in the finals and she had just
five shots of 10 plus scores
out of 20 attempts, besides
having poor shots of 8.8
each .
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