Indian horse riders neither performed brilliantly nor disappointed totally in two days of team and individual eventing at the Asian Games and were in the middle of the small pack here today.
After the first session of dressage and cross country, the four-member squad stood 5th with 180.50 penalty points out of 7 teams but a medal looks remote tomorrow, the last day, when the event ends after the final competition - jumping of the horses.
India, who were just four penalty points away from fourth-placed China after yesterday's dressage performed poorly in the team cross country event today as they were docked 46 penalty points combined - time and jump penalties.
They stood further behind China, who managed to limit their own penalties to 16, at the end of the day.
The main culprits for India were Sangram Singh (atop Ramases) and Mrityunjay Singh Rathore (atop Fleece Clover) who were docked all three types of penalties during the session.
The other two riders - Mirza Fouaad (Penultimate Vision) and Ajai Poovaiah (Cocky Locky) - fared marginally better without incurring jump penalties that their colleagues got.
In the individual rankings going into the final day, Mirza had 48.80 penalties after the cross country, Poovaihah had the least (45.60) while Sangram and Rathore had picked up 110.80 and 86.10 respectively.
Sangram's huge penalty earnings, especially in the cross country in which he was penalized 49.60 was the big dampener during the day.
Mirza and Poovaiah had performed better even in the dressage with lesser number of penalties than their other two teammates.
