PV Sindhu and the Indian archery teams bagged three silver medals for India on Day 10 of the Asian Games 2018. The men's table tennis team settled for bronze after losing to South Korea in semifinal. The men's hockey team thrashed Sri Lanka 20-0 in their final group match. India now have 45 medals - 8 gold, 16 silver and 21 bronze. Meanwhile, Dutee Chand qualified for women's 200m final while Hima Das got disqualified after a false start.
Badminton - PV Sindhu gets silver: PV Sindhu loses 13-21, 16-21 to world No.1 Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan in the women's singles final. However, she is the first Indian ever to bag a silver medal in badminton at the Asian Games. In the final, Tai Tzu was just too good for Sindhu. At no point in the match, it looked possible that Sindhu will get past the Taiwanese. Just like Saina, Sindhu fought as much as she could, but it was never going to be enough.
Malaysian challenge awaits Indian hockey: The Indian men's team will next face Malaysia in the semi-finals on August 30. India crushed Sri Lanka 20-0 in their final Pool A match to end the group stages with a whopping 76 goals in total.
Saina Nehwal settles with bronze: The Hyderabadi badminton player lost to world No.1 Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan in the semi-finals to settle for the bronze medal, which was also Saina's maiden medal at the Asian Games.
Table tennis- historic medal: Indian men's team lost to South Korea 0-3 in the semi-finals but they have secured India's first-ever medal in the sport in Asian Games history.
Golden throw: Neeraj Chopra, 20, won India's first ever gold medal in men's javelin with a top throw of 88.06 m, a national record. The throw would have fetched Chopra a comfortable bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where the silver -winning throw was 88.24 m and the bronze was won with an 85.38 m throw. Chopra's 4 legitimate throws were all better than the Chinese silver medalist's best (82.22). This is the sixth-throw in the world this year by the reigning junior world champion.
Hockey girls beat Thailand 5-0: Having already qualified for the semifinals, India decided to play safe in their last league match against Thailand but still won 5-0 in the women's hockey competition.
Indians make their mark on track
Dutee Chand ran a near-perfect race to help India bag a silver in women’s 100m while Hima Das broke the national record and a fatigued Muhammad Anas came close to rewriting the record books in men’s and women’s 400m races respectively in the Asian Games.
India lost out on a bronze in 10,000m as G Lakshmanan, who had finished third behind Chani Hasan and Abraham Cheroben, both of Bahrain, was disqualified for a lane violation. Dutee is the first Indian since PT Usha in 1986 to finish second in women’s 100m and the first since Rachita Mistry in 1998 to lay her hands on a medal in the marque event. It was a day of redemption for Dutee who had to face a lot of hardships and was even dropped from the Indian squad in 2014 for hyperandrogenism. She was later made ineligible for competition before being reinstated following a Court of Arbitration order.
Hima broke the national record for the second time in as many days during her event. Hima ran at a scorching pace to finish second behind title favourite Salwa Naser of Bahrain, who won the gold with a Games record timing of 50.09 seconds. Hima finished with 50.79 sec, ahead of bronze winner Elina Mikhina of Kazakhstan (52.63). It seemed that Anas had not recovered completely from the effort he had put in in the heats as well as the semis a day earlier. It had a telling effort on his performance in the final as he failed to finish on top of the podium. Anas still managed a timing of 45.69 sec, which was fractionally slower than the 45.31 he had done while setting the national record during the Commonwealth Games in April.
Toor wins shotput gold: Tajinderpal Singh Toor gave up cricket for shot put at the insistence of his father Karm Singh when he was a child. He justified his father’s faith in him by winning the gold in shot put with an Asian Games record. Left-hander Toor first throw was good enough to win him the top place, but he ended the competition in style with the record to claim the first shot put gold for India since 2002 when Bahadur Singh had finished on the top of the podium in the Busan Asian Games.
Quadruple sculls team strikes gold: The four-member team led by Olympians Sawarn Singh and Dattu Bhokanal scripted history for Indian rowing winning gold in men’s quadruple sculls at the Asian Games. The quartet’s show followed a double bronze win by the Indians at the JSC lake on the last day of the rowing competition. The bronze medals were won by Dushyant in lightweight men’s single sculls and the duo of Rohit Kumar and Bhagwan Singh in lightweight men’s double sculls.
The gold won by the team of Sawarn, Dattu, Om Prakash and Sukhmeet Singh was India’s first ever medal in the quadruple sculls at the Games. The quadruple team, which had topped its heat, had a slow start as Indonesia took the lead. The Indians trailed till the 1000m of the race before overtaking the hosts and maintained their lead to bag India’s first gold medal in rowing in this edition.
Bopanna & Sharan give golden solace: The pair of Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan managed to turn Incheon silver into gold in the men’s doubles event in tennis with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Aleksander Bublik and Denis Yevseyev of Kazakhstan in the final. However, Prajnesh Gunneswaran had to settle for bronze in the men’s singles after losing 2-6, 2-6 to Uzbekistan veteran Denis Istomin, adding to Ankita Raina’s bronze in women’s singles event. A gold and two bronze medals from tennis is a creditable performance but the Indians will rue missed opportunities - they could have won at least two more medals, including possibly another gold. In the 2014 Incheon Games, India had won five medals.
kabaddi women go down to Iran, miss gold: The women’s kabaddi team could go just one step further than the men. No more. The defending champions were stopped in their tracks 24-27 in a thrilling final. The loss ended India’s bid for a third straight women’s kabaddi gold and it rankled as it came just a day after the Indian men were shown the exit door – again by Iran. The girls settled for silver as against the bronze won by the men.
Heena tackles pressure, technical glitch for medal: The pistol shooter, Heena Sidhu who went to the Asian Games in the backdrop of a selection controversy, won bronze in women’s 10m air pistol final. Shooting an average qualification round, the former No. 1 qualified seventh for the final with a score of 571. In the final, Heena didn’t get an ideal start and lurked in the 5th position before attending to her pistol that needed some tweaking. Once the pistol was recalibrated, Heena shot a few 10s to jump to third position. She shot 219.2 after 22 shots to settle for the third position. Another Indian in the fray, Manu Bhaker, remained medal-less once again, as she finished fifth with176.2 on board.
Ankita 2nd Indian woman to win singles medal in tennis: India’s Ankita Raina became the only second women’s tennis player after Sania Mirza to win a medal in singles at the Asian Games. In the singles semifinal, the 25-year-old Ahmedabad-born player lost a closely-contested match to Grand Slam quarterfinalist and top seed Shuai Zhang of China. Ankita lost 4-6, 6-7 (6) to settle for a bronze.
