Raining Gold! India bags top honours in wrestling, bridge competition; won 67 medals so far

Jakarta, September 1: Star Indian Boxer Amit Panghal, Pranab Bardhan and Shibhnath Sarkar added two more Gold in Indian medal tally on Saturday at ongoing Asian Games. Notably, the medal tally of India reached to 67 including 15 gold, 23 silver and 29 bronze and stands on eighth place.

 

Amit Panghal today defeated reigning Olympic champion Hasanboy Dusmatov of Uzbekistan by 3-2 in the final of Men's Light Flyweight 49 kilogram category. Meanwhile, the 60-year-old Pranab Bardhan and 56-year-old Shibhnath Sarkar clinched a gold medal in the bridge competition.

The duo finished at the top after scoring 384 points in the finals. The Chinese pair of Lixin Yang and Gang Chen won the silver with a score of 378 and the Indonesian combination of Henky Lasut and Freddy Eddy Manoppo bagged the bronze scoring 374 here. Unfortunately, another Indian pair of Sumit Mukherjee and Debabrata Majumder finished at the ninth place with a score of 333.

Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore congratulated medal winners at Asian Games in a series of a tweet.

The other major final of the day will be in the squash arena where India's women's team will fight for gold against Hong Kong. There are two finals in each bridge event with the second final are being played today. India's teams are also involved in the Women's Pair and Mixed Pair finals. In Diving, India's Siddharth Bajrang will be in action in Men's 10 metre Platform Preliminary.

Importantly, with 67 medals, India have now surpassed their best-ever medal haul in Asian Games, attained in 2010 (65 medals). And, the nation now has 15 gold medals at the quadrennial event. China leads the medals tally followed by Japan.

BACKGROUND:

The best performance by India at the Asian Games came at the 2010 edition in Guangzhou, China where they finished sixth with 14 gold, 17 silver and 34 bronze. This year, around 12,000 athletes from 45 countries will compete in 40 disciplines.