Thiruvanathapuram : Olympic silver-medallist shooter Vijay Kumar shone bright with a golden double even as half a dozen meet records sank without a trace in the swimming pool on the third day of competitions in the 35th National Games here on Tuesday.
After briefly losing the top spot to Haryana on Tuesday, Services Sports Control Board continued to lead the medals tally with 25 medals (16 gold, 2 silver and 7 bronze), followed by the north-Indian powerhouse which tallied 24 medals (15 gold, five silver and 4 bronze). Maharashtra were third despite a higher medal count of 30 on account of 9 gold, 15 silver and six bronze.
Vijay, who won the team silver in last year’s Asian Games, was in ominous form as he grabbed both the individual team gold for Services in the men’s 25m center fire pistol competition. Vijay shot a score of 583 in the individual competition before Services also finished on top in the team event with a score of 1733.
Himachal Pradesh veteran Samresh Jung (576) and Services’ Pemba Tamang, part of the silver-winning Asiad team, settled for the silver and bronze medals respectively in the individual competition.
The shooting range was witness to some unlikely medallists on Tuesday with Kerala getting their first National Games gold-medallist in the sport through Elizabeth Koshy, who upstaged a field comprising, among others, former world champion Tejaswini Sawant, to come out trumps in the 50m women’s Rifle Prone event.
In the men’s 50m rifle prone event, Services’ Chain Singh Manhas left the likes of Joydeep Karmakar (West Bengal) and Sanjeev Rajput (Haryana) behind to snatch the gold medal with a score of 205.8. In trap and skeet shooting events in Thrissur, World Cup gold-medallist Manavjit Sandhu, representing Punjab, won gold in men’s trap finals as Uttar Pradesh’s Anwer Sultan and his statemate Anirudh Singh bagged the silver and bronze respectively.
But once again, the most exciting action took place at the swimming venue where six meet records were shattered. Former Asian Games bronze-medallist Virdhawal Khade bettered the 50m freestyle record that he set in the previous Games by 0.08 seconds after finishing the race in 23 seconds here. In the men’s 400m individual medley, Karnataka’s Arvind Mani bettered the meet record by three seconds with a timing of 4:37.75sec to clinch the gold ahead of West Bengal’s Supriyo Mondal (4:38.99sec) and Sanu Debnath (4:42.28sec).
Another meet record sank when Madhya Pradesh’s Richa Mishra bettered her own women’s 400m individual medley mark set in 2011. The Delhi-girl, representing Madhya Pradesh, clocked 5:07.19sec to clinch a gold and was leading the field by over 12 meters in the last 100m. Gujarat sensation Maana Patel, 15, then created a new meet record in the 200m women’s backstroke race by clocking 2:23.03sec, bettering her own mark.
In the men’s 200m backstroke, the meet record was broken by Services’ P S Madhu who freezed the clock at 2:05.66sec to finish on top.
The evening ended with the breaking of another Games record in the women’s 50m freestyle event, where Maharashtra’s Aditi Dhumatkar clocked 26.90sec to steal a march over national champion Haryana’s Shivani Kataria (27.26sec), who had to settle for silver. —PTI
