India wait for gold as medals keep coming

Nagoya, Sep 21: Gold continued to elude India at the Asian Games, but medals kept arriving from the shooting range for a second successive day, while Suchika Tariyal’s historic MMA bronze came with a painful sense of what might have been. Suchika became India’s first Asian Games medallist in MMA after a drawn semifinal against Singapore’s Hui Hoon Teo in the women’s traditional 60kg category. The 36-year-old Indian was left in tears after the bout, with her 700-gramme weight disadvantage proving decisive under the competition rules, which award the verdict to the lighter fighter in the event of a draw. Suchika, from Kiloi village in Haryana’s Rohtak district, is a 2024 world jiu-jitsu champion and had represented India in judo at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and kurash at the 2022 Asian Games. “This is more than my life. I will never forget that I came to Japan and got a medal for my country. I can now happily die,” she told PTI after regaining her composure. India’s overall medal tally stood at six — four silver and two bronze — with the wait for a gold continuing.The shooting range provided the biggest haul of the day as Himanshu Dhillon and Rudrankksh Patil won silver and bronze respectively in the men’s 10m air rifle. The pair also combined with 18-year-old Parth Mane to secure a team silver.India’s shooting tally rose to five medals — four silver and one bronze — but China once again set the gold-medal benchmark. World No. 1 Sheng Lihao won the individual title, while Sheng, Changhong Zhang and Sihan Ma collected 1899.0 points to set a new world record, bettering their previous mark of 1898.4 set in Cairo last year.India enjoyed several other encouraging results. The women’s hockey team thrashed Indonesia 17-1, strengthening its campaign for the gold medal that would also secure a direct qualification spot for the 2028 Olympics.The men’s badminton team advanced to the quarterfinals with a 3-0 victory over Bangladesh, with Lakshya Sen, K Srikanth and Ayush Shetty winning their singles matches comfortably enough for the doubles games to be cancelled. India’s men’s and women’s table tennis teams also progressed to the last eight with identical 3-0 victories over Pakistan. The women topped Group F after three straight wins.Sumit Kundu also made a winning start in the 70kg boxing category. There were setbacks in the pool, however. Two-time Olympian Srihari Nataraj finished 10th and last in the 50m backstroke final in 25.52 seconds, slower than his 25.37 effort in the heats. India also bowed out of the soft tennis mixed doubles after Aadhya Tiwari and Jay Meena lost 2-5 to the Philippines’ Christy Sanosa and Sherwin Ray Nuguit in the round of 16.With the competition gathering pace, India have shown depth across several disciplines, but the early medal picture remains defined by silver and bronze. (PTI)