Manu Bhaker and Lakshya Sen settled for silver medals in the 10m air pistol mixed international and men's singles badminton events respectively at the ongoing 2018 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) at Buenos Aires on Friday.
Bhaker Shines In Unique Event
Shooting sensation claimed a silver medal in the unique 10m air pistol mixed international format, along with Tajikistan’s Behzan Fayzullaev. They lost the gold medal shootout 3-10 to Germany’s Vanessa Seeger and Bulgaria’s Kiril Kirov.
Bhaker, 16, thus became the second Indian to win two medals at the ongoing Youth Games after judoka Tababi Thangjam.
The India-Tajik pair had on Thursday come through qualification with a score of 751. They then beat an Egyptian-Thai pair 10-4 in the round of 16 at the Parque Polideportivo Roca shooting range in the Argentine capital.
Advertisement
They beat a pair from Lithuania and Moldova 10-8 in the quarterfinals and then overcame Andria Ibarra of Mexico and Dymtro Honta of Ukraine 10-3 in the semifinals.
The German-Bulgarian pair, however, started strong in the finals and was 3-0 ahead at one stage before winning 10-3 to emerge champions.
In the unique format, the gold medal winner of the individual event is paired with the shooter who finished 20th in the final.
India thus wrapped up their shooting campaign with two gold and three silver medals.
On Tuesday, Bhaker won the gold medal in the women's 10m air pistol event.
Advertisement
Sen Wins India's Fourth Medal
On the badminton courts, Sen, the reigning junior Asian champion, lost 15-21, 19-21 in a 42-minute final match against Li Shifeng of China.
He had beaten Shifeng in straight games in the quarterfinals of the Asian Championships in July but on Friday, it was the turn of his Chinese rival to turn the tables on him.
In both the games, Shifeng led all through and Sen was playing catch-up which he eventually could not succeed in the end.
In the first game, Shifeng took an early lead and raced to 14-5 in no time. Sen made a fine recovery to narrow down the gap to 13-16 but he could not sustain it and Shifeng went ahead 18-13 and then made it 20-14 to have six game points. Though Sen saved one game point, the Chinese won the next one to pocket the first game in 17 minutes.
The second game was a closer fight than the first but the Chinese was leading all the time. Shifeng was ahead 8-7 initially but the gap widened to 12-7 before Sen made it 11-14. The three-point gap remained for some time before the Chinese made it 18-14 and then 19-14.
Sen made a last-ditch effort to save the match by winning three straight points but Shifeng still made it 20-17 to have three match points.
Sen was still not throwing the towel as he reeled off two straight points to make it 19-20 and just one point away from a deuce. But his Chinese opponent was a hard nut to crack as Shifeng won the final point to pocket the second game and win the match to clinch the gold.
Advertisement
This was India's fourth silver along with three gold in the ongoing Youth Olympics.
Impressive Hockey
The men's men's hockey team moved to the semi-finals with a 4-2 win over Poland here on Friday.
Shivam Anand (1st, 8th minutes) sounded the board twice while Maninder Singh a(3rd) and Sanjay (17th) were the other goal scorers for India in the quarterfinals of the Hockey 5s competition at the Parque Polideportivo Roca.
Poland's goals came from the sticks of Eryk Bembenek (16th) and Michal Nowakowski (18th).
The Indian women's hockey 5s team beat South Africa 5-2 in their final Pool A match to advance to the quarterfinals.
Advertisement
The Indians finished in the second spot in their pool with 12 points, behind leaders Argentina.
Mumtaz Khan (2nd, 17th minute), Reet (10th), Lalremsiami (12th) and Ishika Chaudhary (13th) scored in India's convincing victory over South Africa on Thursday as the team ended the pool stages on a winning note after Wednesday's defeat to hosts Argentina.
Swimmer Srihari Natraj failed to qualify for the finals of the men's 200m backstroke after finishing sixth in Heat 1 with a timing of 2:04.80, which was overall 13th best. Only eight best made it to the final.
Of the eight medals won by the Indian contingent so far, five are from shooting. Manu and Saurabh Chaudhary had won gold in the men’s and women’s 10m air pistol events, while Shahu Mane and Mehuli Ghosh had won silver in the men's and women’s 10m air rifle events, earlier in the Games.
Advertisement
(PTI)
