New shooting sensation Jitu Rai provided the first gold medal, while Shweta Chaudhry clinched a bronze as India launched their campaign in the 17th Asian Games with two medals on the opening day of the competitions in Incheon on Saturday.
While Jitu struck gold in the 50m pistol event, Shweta’s bronze came in the 10m air pistol competition at the Ongnyeon Shooting Range in Incheon but medal aspirants Heena Sidhu and Malaika Goel turned out to be disappointments as they failed to even reach the finals.
It was a reasonably good start for the Indian contingent, bagging a gold on the very first day of the Games, considered to the second biggest after the Olympics.
While the shooters stole the limelight, athletes in other sports also began their campaign on a bitter-sweet note.
Badminton
Star shuttlers Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu hammered their respective rivals in straight games as India clinched a 3-0 triumph over Macau China to enter the women’s team event quarterfinals.
However, the men’s team was outplayed by South Korea 0-3. K Srikanth and Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Parupalli Kashyap went down in contrasting fashions while the doubles team of Sumeeth Reddy and Manu Attri also failed to come good.
Tennis
The Indian women’s tennis team was also off to a winning start as it blanked Oman 3-0 in the first round here.
Prarthana Gulabrao Thombare and Ankita Raina notched up contrasting singles victories before the pairing of Natasha Marie Anne Palha and Rishika Sunkara was handed a walkover in the doubles match.
Star of the day
But the star of the early proceedings was undoubtedly Armyman Jitu. The 27-year-old showed steely grit to get the better of a strong field, which included two-time Olympic champion Jin Jongoh of South Korea, to snatch the gold off the final shot in a straight duel with Vietnamese rival Nguyen Hoang Phuong.
The Vietnamese, in fact, was leading the Indian ace, who had recently won the gold at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and a silver at the Granada World Championships going into this competition. But the Indian clinched the issue on the last shot.
Jitu shot 8.4 after his rival had fumbled with a poor 5.8 to win the gold with an overall tally of 186.2, as compared to Nguyen’s 183.4.
This was Jitu’s sixth medal on the trot in international competitions this year. The bronze was clinched by China’s Wang Zhiwei (165.6).
Jitu thus became only the second Indian pistol shooter to clinch an Asian Games title after Jaspal Rana and the fourth shooter overall after shotgun experts Randhir Singh in 1978 and Ronjan Sodhi in 2010.
Men’s shooting team
However, the Indian men’s team finished fourth with his teammates Om Prakash (555) and Onkar Singh (551) ending up 10th and 16th respectively.
Shweta’s success
Earlier, Shweta, competing with a gun she was not used to as her own gun had been held back by the Korean Customs, secured the bronze medal in the 10m range in air pistol with a total tally of 176.4 behind champion Zhang Mengyuan of China (202.2) and runner—up Jung Jeehae of South Korea (201.3).
Shweta’s teammates Heena Sidhu (378) and Malaika Goel (373) ended up 13th and 24th respectively while the trio as a team got the fifth spot from among 14 teams.
Shweta defied odds, a travel-weary schedule and absence of her regular weapon to provide India with their first medal.
The 28-year-old had to eliminate a rival through a shoot-off to ensure the bronze in the women’s 10m air pistol event.
Having qualified for the eight-strong final list with a total score of 383 even as her more fancied teammate Heena Sidhu got eliminated, Shweta showed exemplary poise to fight her way back.
She managed to stave off early elimination by being the third best after the first eight shots, recovering from sixth position. She had a poor 8.4 when the last four shooters were standing which forced a play-off with China’s Guo Wenjun to decide who remains in the competition.
Shweta was leading Guo 138.3 to 137.9 when she became nervous and a poor mark of 8.4 followed to force the shoot-off in which she shot 10.7 while her Chinese rival came up with only 10.0 to be eliminated.
Easy for Saina, Sindhu
In the badminton event, Saina opened the proceedings for the team and hardly broke a sweat before thrashing Kit Ieng Wong 21-6 21-4 in just 21 minutes.
Sindhu was the next player in and she was also in rampaging form, beating Teng Iok U 21-8 21-9. Sindhu, who won a bronze medal in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, took just 24 minutes to wrap the issue in her favour.
In the doubles match, N Sikki Reddy and Pradnya Gadre faced some stiff challenge from Zhibo Zhang and Rong Wang before prevailing 21-16 21-17 in the 32-minute contest.
Disappointment
But there was disappointment for the men. Srikanth was the first to take the court and was hardly a match for Wanho Son, who breezed past him 21-14 21-8 in 37 minutes.
The doubles match was next and here too, South Korea dominated and notched the match 21-12 21-9 in 35 minutes to take a formidable lead.
In the crucial third match, Kashyap was up against former world number one Hyunil Lee. The Indian displayed fine form by taking the opening game 21-6 in 12 minutes but it was all downhill from there on.
Lee bounced back remarkably to clinch the next two games 21-14 21-10. Kashyap fought hard in the decisive third game, which lasted 44 minutes, but fell short in the final analysis.
Thombare shines
On the tennis court, Thombare started the tie for India and dropped just one game to beat Sarah Abdulmajeed Rasheed Balushi 6-0 6-1 in a match which lasted 52 minutes.
However, Ankita had to work hard for her win over Fatma Talib Sulaiman Al Nabhani. She squandered the opening set win before getting her act together to clinch the match 6-4 2-6 6-3 in nearly two hours.
With an unassailable lead in hand, the doubles rubber was not much of consequence for the Indians, who were saved of the toil courtesy a walkover.
Handball
But there was disappointment in handball with the men’s team going down 20-39 to Chinese Taipei in their opening Group D match.
In a rather lopsided contest, the Indians were trailing 11-24 at the end of the first 30-minute period before losing the next period 9-15.
Indian men struggle past Hong Kong in volleyball opener
Indian spikers were given a tough time by an unfancied Hong Kong before they prevailed 3-1 in the opening group league game of the men’s volleyball event at the 17th Asian Games.
India won by 23-25, 25-18, 25-16, 25-21 against a spirited Hong Kong side which is at least 90 places below them.
It wasn’t one of the most convincing performances from the Indian men, as there were too many errors at the net and also the performance of the libero Sivasubramanium Kanagaraj left a lot to be desired.
However it was the tallest man in the court -- GR Vaishnav, standing at 6 feet 9 inches, whose timely interceptions and smashes was one of the reasons that ‘Men In Yellow’ overcame their first hurdle.
Vaishnav scored 13 points while his teammates Prabhakaran and Gurinder Singh contributed with 15 points each. However Prabhakaran did struggle in the first game as he was unable to consistently place his smashes which led to a number of retrievals by opposition libero Kin Pong Jonathan.
Having conceded the first set at 23, the Indians did well to open an 10 point lead in the second set before winning it at 18.
The third set also went India’s way as they got the momentum going in their favour.
The young Hong Kong spikers did make a valiant attempt to level proceedings in the fourth set as they lead 16-14 till the final time-out.
However, it was Punjab lad Gurinder, who was in his element as his killer smashes opened up lead at 20 and Indians finished it off at 25-21.
