India wrestles Gold, Tejaswini and Punia clinch Silver, takes up medal tally to 31

Indian grappler Sushil Kumar who overcame injuries and controversies to be in the Games at Gold Coast, continued his dominance at the Common Wealth Games as he overpowered Johannes Botha of South Africa by technical superiority in the final bout to clinch the Gold in the Men’s 74kg freestyle category. With this Gold medal, Sushil completed his hat-trick of Gold medals at the CWG, with previous Gold’s coming at CGW Delhi and CWG Glasgow.

Earlier, Rahul Aware won Gold in Men’s 57kg freestyle category where he defeated Steven Takahashi of Canada in the final bout; Babita Kumari lost to Canada’s Diana Weicker in Women’s 53kg Freestyle (Nordic) event and finished with Silver medal whereas Kiran had to be content with Bronze medal in women’s Freestyle 76kg category.

In women’s 50m Rifle Prone Finals Tejaswini Sawant won Silver with a cumulative score of 618.9 over six series to claim her sixth CWG medal, Anjum Moudgil, the other Indian shooter in the same event who was in the fray, finished a lowly 16th with a cumulative score of 602.2.

Seema Punia clinched Silver in the Women’s discus throw event with a with a throw of 60.41m, which she achieved in her first attempt and Navjjet Dhillon picked up the Bronze with a throw of 57.43m in her final attempt which helped her to sneak past Sositina Hakeai of New Zealand, Meanwhile Dani Stevens of Australia took the top honors as she created a new CGW record with a throw of 68.26m. In Women’s long jump final, India’s Nellickal V. Neena (6.19m) and Nayana James (6.14m) finished 10th and 12th respectively.

In Women’s hockey, Indian eves went down fighting 0-1 against Australia in the semi-final. India had their chances but failed to convert them as Australia will go into the final match against New Zealand while India will be facing England in the bronze medal match.

Indian shuttlers continued their fine form at the games as Kidambi Srikanth, PV Sindhu, HS Prannoy, Saina Nehwal, Ruthvika Gadde and the duo’s of Satwik Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty; and Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy booked their berth in the quarter-finals in their respective categories.

In Table Tennis, Sharath Achanta, Harmeet Desai, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and the pairs of Sanil Shankar Shetty and Madhurika Patkar; and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Manika Batra moved into the quarter-finals in their respective categories. Manika Batra advanced to the semi-finals of the Women’s singles table tennis event after beating Yihan Zhou of Singapore, while Mouma Das lost to Mengyu Yu of Singapore in the Women’s Singles quarterfinal.

(India ended Day 8 at Gold Coast with a medal tally of 31; Gold–14, Silver–7, Bronze–10)

(Pic Courtesy- Twitter)