The much-hyped Indian boxing squad, led by Olympic medal winner Vijender Singh, flopped but the unheralded athletics contingent exceeded expectations when Krishna Poonia led an unprecedented clean sweep of all the women’s discus medals in the Commonwealth Games today.
Poonia led a historic Indian 1-2-3 by hurling the disc to 61.51m and became the country’s first woman in 52 years to win the gold, on a day the Games was rocked by its first doping scandal.
Poonia is the second Indian athlete after Milkha Singh (1958, Cardiff) to garner a gold in track and field events and her title enabled the country to equal its previous-best gold medal haul in Games history. The country had won 30 gold at Manchester eight years ago. She swept the discus event, with Harwant Kaur (60.66m) and national record holder Seema Antil (58.46m) bagging the silver and bronze, to lift the host country’s tally in athletics to a record seven.
However, the story that emerged from the boxing ring was disappointing, with Vijender and three others biting the dust in the semis and settling for the bronze.
The consolation was the entry of southpaw Suranjoy Singh (52 kg), Manoj Kumar (64 kg) and Paramjit Samota (+91 kg) into the finals after winning their semi-final bouts. Suranjoy reached the gold medal round defeating Haroon Iqbal of Pakistan, Manoj Kumar made the title round edging out Valentino Knowles of Bahamas and Samota outpunched F A Junior of Tonga.
The shock defeat of hot title favourite Vijender led the Indians to lodge a protest with the event’s officialdom after the referee penalised the Indian star towards the fag end of the bout, when he led narrowly.
Amandeep Singh (49 kg), Asian champion Jai Bhagwan (60 kg) and Dilbag Singh (69 kg) also lost their semi-final bouts and had to be content with bronze medals. Women rifle shooters Tejaswini Sawant and Meena Kumari also grabbed the bronze in the women’s 50 metres rifle prone event.
