India bagged their second silver in the 17th Asian Games as the men's shooting team finished second in the 25 metre center fire pistol event while an unlikely bronze came from swimmer Sandeep Sejwal here Friday.
With the tally at 17 medals, including one gold and two silver, India dropped a place to the 16th spot behind tiny nations like Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore, Kuwait. China continues to lead the table with 179 medals, including a whopping 91 gold medals, followed by hosts South Korea (104 including 31 golds) and Japan (107 including 30 gold medals) in the second and the third place respectively.
While another gold medal eluded India for the sixth consecutive day, India can still hope for two more gold medals as the men and women's squash team put on a spirited show to qualify for the finals, assuring themselves of at least a silver medal which is an improvement on the bronze they had collected four years ago.
Earlier in the day, the trio of Pemba Tamang, Gurpreet Singh and London Olympics silver medallist Vijay Kumar scored a combined 1740-68x to finish behind China's team of Yongde Jin, Chuanlin Li and Feng Ding, who fired 1742-56x to take gold.
Tamang shot 288-22x (93, 99, 96 in precision and 99, 97, 97 in rapid) while Gurpreet scored 292-25x (98, 99, 95 in precision and 95, 96, 97 in rapid). Vijay shot 285-21x (95, 94, 96 in precision and 100, 98, 96 in rapid) to help India get their 16th overall medal and eighth from the shooting range.
South Korea, with the team of Youngmin Kim, Daekyu Jang and Jinil Kim, scored 1739-54x to win bronze.
However, none of the Indians managed to finish on the podium in the individual event. Pemba Tamang, Gurpreet and Vijay finished eighth, ninth and 12th, respectively. The individual gold went to Qatar's Oleg Engachev while China's Jin took silver and Singapore's Bin Gai won bronze.
Meanwhile, the Indian women's team of Lajja, Anjali Bhagwat and former World Champion Tejaswini Muley finished sixth in the rifle 3 positions event while in the individual category, Lajja Goswami came seventh. China, South Korea and Kazakhstan won gold, silver and bronze, respectively in the team event.
Later in the day, Sejwal gave India its maiden medal from the aquatics pool at the Incheon Games after he won the bronze in the men's 50 metre breaststroke at the Munhak Park Tae-hwan Aquatics Center. Sejwal clocked 28.26 seconds. The gold went to Kazakh swimmer Dmitriy Balandin (27.78 secs) with a Games Record, while Japan's Yasuhiro Koseki (27.89 secs) took the silver. Balandin broke the record of 27.80 secs set by Zhi Xie of China in the 2010 Guangzhou Games.
Meanwhile, the men and the women's squash team put on a spirited show and are now eyeing maiden gold medals from the sport in the Asian Games.
After the women carved out a 2-0 win over hosts South Korea, the Indian men showed their verve to down Kuwait with a similar 2-0 margin in the semi-finals. Both the teams will be facing Malaysia in Saturday's final.
After the bronze that each team had won at the Guangzhou Asian Games four years ago, the Indians underlined their progress with fine performances.
Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal were in great touch, winning their respective singles matches in the women's semi-finals while Mahesh Mangaonkar and Saurav Ghosal notched fine victories as the Indian teams made it to the gold medal round.
With a silver and bronze already won in the individual phase by Ghosal and Dipika, respectively, India have already scripted a new chapter in the history of Asian Games squash.
In the women's semi-final, it was Joshna who started against Park Eunok who she beat in just 34 minutes to put India one up against South Korea. Dipika started well, but suffered a mid-match lull to drop a game before she came surging back to beat Song Sunmi. The finish was fluent as the Indian camp cheered the duo for the wonderful job done.
World No.21 Joshna thrashed Eunok Park 3-0 (11-6, 13-11, 11-8) in 34 minutes while World No.12 Dipika registered a 3-1 (11-4, 11-5, 8-11, 11-5) victory over Sunmi Song in 37 minutes.
Significantly, the man who gave the inspired start was Mangaonkar, who hardly put a foot wrong in his straight game win over Ammar Altamimi.
Mangaonkar thrashed Ammar 3-0 (11-3, 11-4, 12-10) in just 37 minutes. World No.16 Ghosal was made to work hard by Almezayen Abdullah before prevailing 3-2 (11-8, 7-11, 11-9, 5-11, 11-3) in the second rubber which lasted one hour and two minutes.
Ghosal who was still smarting over the defeat at the hands of Abdullah Almezayen a couple of days ago in the singles final, could not miss this occasion to put the record straight. Ghosal was the hot favourite to win the singles gold but settled for silver as the Kuwaiti registered a surprise victory.
Once again the squash court provided a classic contest with both players giving nothing away. Four games were shared before Ghosal changed gears, rode an early lead, increased it to 6-1 and then never looked back.
