Shooters, archers, wrestles take India\’s CWG medals tally to 31 (Evening Lead)

Indo-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI - India\’s shooters bagged two golds and a silver, women wrestlers their first medals on debut in the Commonwealth Games — one gold, a silver and a bronze — and archers, too, won their first Games medals, a silver and a bronze, taking the gold tally to 14 and the overall to 31 on the fourth day of the competitions here Thursday.

Top-seeded Somdev Devvarman beat sixth seed Rubin Statham of New Zealand 6-3, 6-4 to advance to the men\’s singles tennis semi-finals.

Second-seeded Sania Mirza moved into the women\’s semi-finals, beating eighth-seeded New Zealander Marina Erakovic 6-2, 6-3.

India also moved into the semi-finals of the badminton mixed team event, blanking Canada 3-0.

Indian shooters Vijay Kumar and Gurpreet Singh brought the country its sixth gold from the range by winning the 25-metre rapid fire pistol pairs event with a new Commonwealth Games record here Thursday.

Kumar (587) and Singh (575) shot a cumulative total of 1,162 to win the yellow metal ahead of Malaysia and Australia at the Karni Singh Shooting Range.

The Indians broke the Games record of 1,134 by a huge margin. That was set by Vijay Kumar and Pemba Tamang at the 2006 Melbourne Games.

It always feels great to win the gold by breaking our own record. This time we broke the Games record by a huge margin of 28 points. It was a tough competition as all the participating teams have sent their best players, he said.

Indian shooters Omkar Singh and Gurpreet Singh won the gold in the men\’s 10-metre air pistol pairs event while Ronjon Sodhi won the silver in the double trap shooting event.

But there was bad news for the hosts in the women\’s 50-metre rifle three position contest as Tejaswani finished ninth. Only the top eight shooters qualified for the finals. Tejaswani\’s compatriot Lajja Gauswami, who made it to the final, took the sixth place returning a score of 666.8 (570 in qualifying, 96.8 in final).

Indian women opened their gold account in freestyle wrestling, Geeta winning the 55kg gold, Nirmala Devi the 48 kg silver and Suman Kundu the 63 kg bronze.

The Indian men\’s archery team of Ritul Chatterjee, Jignas Chittibomo and Chinna Raju Srither went down to England to settle for the silver in the compound event.

The match went down to the wire with England beating India 231-229 to win their second archery gold of the Games.

Earlier, the trio of Gagandeep Kaur, Jhano Hansdah and Bheigyabati Chanu bagged an unexpected bronze in the women\’s compound team event, country\’s first archery medal in the Games.

The hosts defeated Malaysia 223-219 in the bronze play-off at the Yamuna Sports complex here. Eventual silver medallist Canada beat India in the semifinals by a seven-point difference with the final scoreline reading 224-217. England won the gold.

Archery has returned to the Games after 28 years.

The Indian archers won the spectators\’ hearts with their fine display.

Gagandeep was emotional after the podium finish. \”It\’s the first archery medal for India in the Games. I am excited to be part of it. We tried our best in the semi-finals but it did not happen.\”

The Indian archers managed a medal despite getting their bows and arrows only a month before the competition.

\”We got the equipment late but it did not affect our performance in the end,\” Jhano told IANS.

Archery Association of India secretary general Paresh Nath Mukherjee said the medals in the compound category were a bonus as the country\’s hopes to garner a large number of medals from the discipline rested primarily on the recurve archers.

The badminton team of Jwala Gutta and V.Diju defeated Grace Gao and NG Toby 21-8, 21-12; Chetan Anand overcame David Snider 21-18, 21-17, and Saina Nehwal beat Anna Rice 21-16, 21-13, for the semi-final spot.

India will now face England, who had beaten them 3-2 at Melbourne Games four years ago at the same stage, for a place in the final.

India had won bronze at Melbourne.

Wrestler Geeta won the gold in the freestyle 55 kg category, defeating Australian Emily Bensted 11-0, Nirmala the silver beating Canadian Carol Huynh 12-0 and Suman the bronze defeating South Africa\’s Zumicke Geringer 9-2.

It was India\’s first gold in women\’s wrestling, which is debuting at the Games.