Rower Dushiant Dushyant's bronze was the only highlight on what was an unimpressive day for India, who dropped to the 15th position in the medals' tally with a total of 12 medals on the fifth day of the competition at the 17th Asian Games here Wednesday.
Dushyant faltered in the final 500 metres and had to settle for the bronze medal in the men's lightweight single sculls final of the 17th Asian Games at the Chungju Tangeum Lake Rowing Center. Dushyant completed the 2,000 metre race in seven minutes and 26.57 seconds to finish third behind gold medal winner Hoi Kwan Lok of Hong Kong and South Korea's Hakbeom Lee, who took silver.
The Indian rower, who had scaled down his weight to 72 kg from 78 to compete in the lightweight event, was in second place 1.57 seconds behind Kwan Lok after the first 500 metres. The 22-year-old then rowed into the lead and opened up 1.21 seconds lead by the 1,000m mark.
The Hong Kong rower ate into the Indian's lead to reduce the difference to 0.64 seconds in the next 500m but Dushyant was still 2.21 seconds ahead of Lee in third place. The Indian, however, lost steam on the home stretch as both Kwan Lok and Lee caught up and then overtook him to deny Dushyant a top-two finish.
Shooters, who had grabbed the lions share of India's medals, misfired at the Ongnyeon International Shooting Range.
The men's 25m rapid fire team narrowly missed out on the bronze medal, finishing fourth, while the trio of Raj Chaudhary, Lajjakumari Tilakpuri Gauswami and Tejaswini Manojrao Muley had a poor outing Wednesday with all three finishing well behind medal places in the 50m rifle prone women's finals. Raj (614.6) was the top placed Indian in the event finishing a lowly 22nd place while Lajjakumari (613.7) and Tejaswini (608.8) fared even worse, ending in the 25th and 36th place, respectively.
The men's team comprising Harpreet Singh, Gurpreeet Singh and Pemba Tamang scored 1704-39x to finish behind Vietnam's bronze medal winning team of Thanh Minh Ha, Tu Thanh Kieu and Nam Quang Bui, who scored 1704-41x.
The two teams ended with the same overall scores but the Vietnamese fired two more perfect shots than their Indian counterparts to sneak into third. However, the Indian trio failed to reach the final in the individual event.
Harpreet, who finished seventh, scored 98, 97, 93 in stage 2 of the qualification which was not enough for him to enter the final. His total score was 578-16x while his teammates Gurpreet and Tamang finished 12th and 20th, respectively. Gurpreet scored 570-13x while Tamang finished with a score of 556-10x.
But there was good news for India from the archery range and the boxing ring.
Archer Dipika Kumar kept alive medal hopes finishing a creditable eighth in the ranking round and booking a place in the pre-quarterfinals of the women's individual recurve event at the Gyeyang Archery Field. Th 20-year-old Dipika, who won two gold medals in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, shot a total of 1337 over four distances 70m, 60m, 50m and 30m. She faces Uzbekistan's Munira Nurmanova in the pre-quarter final elimination round on Friday.
Laxmirani Majhi also made it to the pre-quarters after she finished 15th with a score of 1319 and will be up against Sharbekova Asel of Kyrgystan in the elimination round.
However, two other Indian archers Laishram Bambayla Devi (1301) and Pranitha Vardhaneni (1271) failed to make the elimination round after they finished 20th and 30th respectively. But the quartet of Dipika, Laxmirani, Bambayla and Pranitha also assured a fifth-place finish for the Indian team with a total of 3957. Indian will now take on Hong Kong in the team quarter-finals.
In the men's event, India were sixth with a total score of 3923 behind South Korea (4101), Japan (4001), Malaysia (3955), Taipei (3951) and China (3928) over the distances of 90, 70, 50 and 30m.
Indian boxers also began their campaign on a winning note with Akhil Kumar (60kg) defeating Nepal's Purna Bahadur Lama via a technical knockout and Shiva Thapa (56kg) getting a walkover to enter the second round of their respective events at Seonhak Gymnasium.
Shiva only had to step into the ring as his opponent, Leonel Helo Prada of Timor Leste, gave him a walkover in his opening round at the Seonhak Gymnasium here. Thapa will now take on Nadir of Pakistan in the round of 16 bout Friday.
Akhil, returning to the international scene after a three-year absence due to injury, raced to a 30-24 lead in the opening round when Lama faced the standing eight count twice. The second half panned out similarly with the Nepalese boxer facing one more standing eight count before Akhil won it 30-25. The referee stopped the match halfway into the final three minutes and declared Akhil the winner via a technical knockout.
In badminton, Saina Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu reached the pre-quarter-finals of the women's singles. The men's doubles team of B. Sumeeth Reddy-Manu Attri and the women's pair of Pradnya Gadre-N. Siki Reddy also won their respective matches comfortably to reach the pre-quarterfinals.
London Olympics bronze medallist Saina thrashed Macau's Teng Lok U 21-10, 21-8 in 26 minutes while two-time World Championships bronze medallist Sindhu took only 19 minutes to register a convincing 21-7, 21-13 win over Kit Leng Wong of Macau.
Reddy-Attri thrashed Maldives' Nasheeu Sharafuddeen and Mohamed Sarim 21-7, 21-7 in 19 minutes to win Round of 32 match. The Indian pair will face the Chinese team of Xialong Liu and Zhian Qiu in the pre-quarterfinal Thursday.
In the women's competition, Pradnya and Siki registered a facile win over Nepal's Sichhya Shrestha-Punam Gurung. The Indian pair wrapped up the Round of 32 match 21-6, 21-4 in just 16 minutes.
