Bhaker bags silver as men’s hockey side reaches semis
Young shooting sensation Manu Bhaker became the second Indian after judoka Tababi Devi to win two medals at the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) after winning a silver while the men’s hockey team moved to the semi-finals with a 4-2 win over Poland on Friday.
In a unique format, Manu combined with Tajikistan’s Behzan Fayzullaev in the 10m air pistol mixed international and settled for a silver after losing the gold medal match 3-10 to Germany’s Vanessa Seeger and Bulgaria’s Kiril Kirov.
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.
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.
According to the format, the gold medal winner of the individual event is paired with the athlete who finished 20th in the final. India thus wrapped up their shooting campaign with two gold and three silver medals.
On the hockey turf, 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.
The Indian women’s hockey 5s team beat South Africa 5-2 in their final Pool A match to advance to the quarterfinals. The Indians finished in the second spot in their pool 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.
LAKSHYA IN FINAL
Lakshya Sen recovered from a game down to beat Kodai Naraoka of Japan 14-21, 21-15, 24-22 in the men’s badminton semis. He will face China’s Li Shifeng in the title clash.
Swimmer Srihari Natraj failed to qualify for the finals of the men’s 200m backstroke.