Panaji: Fourteen-year-old Dhinidhi Desinghu became the youngest women swimmer to win seven gold medals in the National Games while Srihari Nataraj finished with tens medals including eight gold, one silver and bronze each as Karnataka expectedly topped the standings chart at the end of aquatic competitions of the 37th National Games at the Campal Swimming Complex on Saturday.
Entering the last day’s competition, Dhinidhi was locked with teammate Nina Venkatesh with five golds and both had two more events to compete. It was the youngster who took the gold in the 100 M freestyle with a new games record to forge ahead.
Later, she and Nina teamed up with Srihari and Vidith Shankar to help Karnataka clinch the gold in the 4x100 M Medley Relay, the final event of the swimming competition of the National Games to complete a haul of seven gold medals.
Haryana and Punjab shared the four gold medals on offer, on day two shooting competitions at the Yash Academy range in Mandrem, North Goa. Two Olympians, Anjum Moudgil and Angad Vir Singh Bajwa in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions (3P) and men’s skeet respectively, were among the gold medallists. Haryana’s golds came through Sanjana Sood in the women’s skeet and the pair of Sarabjot Singh and Palak Gulia in the 10m air pistol mixed team event. Haryana now have three of the five golds decided in shooting so far, after Sagar Bhargava had won the men’s 10m air pistol on the opening day on Friday.
Defending champions Services Sports Control Board (SSCB) and Haryana have inched closer to table leaders Maharashtra taking their gold medal tally to 51 and 45 respectively. Maharashtra have a total of 179 medals that includes 63 gold and 58 each silver and bronze medals.
Harshitha Jayaram of Kerala won gold in 100 M Breaststroke with a new games record while S.P Likith of SSCB won the event in the men’s section with a timing of 1:02.25 s. Srihari won the gold in the 100 M Men’s freestyle with a dominating swim, creating a new games record and stopping the clock at 49.97 s.
Haryana won their second Shooting gold of the Goa National Games when the pair of Sarabjot Singh and Palak Gulia won the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team event, with a 17-11 win over Rajasthan’s Khanak Vyas and Amit Sharma. The two teams got to the gold medal match by means of coming first and second in qualification. While Sarabjot and Palak topped with a combined score of 581, Khanak and Amit were second with 577. Madhya Pradesh won bronze. Olympian and former world championship silver medallist Anjum Moudgil was next to top the podium as she got back to the winning way after an indifferent year, registering a pillar to post victory over the likes of world record holder Sift Kaur Samra and Hangzhou Asiad star Ashi Chouksey who won silver and bronze respectively.
Asian Games mixed doubles gold medallist Rutuja Bhosale partnered with Prarthana Thombare to win the gold medal in Women’s Doubles tennis competition at the Fatorda Multipurpose Grounds. The Maharashtra pair beat Sravya Shivani and Rashmika Bhamipaty of Telangana in straight sets (6-3, 6-1).
Later, Maharashtra did the double in the doubles category as Arjun Khade and Purav Raja beat Prajwal S.D Dev and Adil Kalyanpur of Karnataka in straight sets (7/6, 6/3) to win the gold.
In Canoeing and Kayaking at the Chapora River, Madhya Pradesh’s Arjun Singh who had represented the country in recently concluded Asian Games clinched two medals in the Canoeing races. In the individual 1000 M category, Arjun won gold with a timing of 4:19.375 s. Later he partnered with Sonu Verma to win silver in the 1000 M canoe with a timing of 4.29.055 s. SSCB won the gold while Odisha won the bronze.
