Asian Games: Historic silver for archer Tarundeep Rai ; boxers Vikas Krishan ,Dinesh Kumar in hunt for gold

Indian archer Tarundeep Rai clinched a historic silver medal, while teen boxer Vikas Krishan (60kg) and his senior Dinesh Kumar (81kg) stayed in hunt for the gold medals on

Wednesday that saw India bagging six medals in the Asian Games here.

Tarundeep became the first Indian archer to win a Asian Games medal in the men’s individual event after he lost the final to South Korea’s Kim Woo Jin at the Aoti Archery Complex. The first set ended at 28-28 to split points.

Rai got a chance to take the lead in the next set but he allowed Kim to come right back into the game as the South Korean won the set at 28-27. Rai shot exceptionally well in the third set to win at 29-28 and tie the score 3-3.

In the fourth, Rai had all 9s for 27 but Kim had 10,9,9 for 28 to snatch the lead at 5-3. Rai cracked in the final set with an 8 followed by 10 and 9 (27). Kim hit 10, 9, 10 (29) to deny the Indian a historic gold medal.

It was a mixed day for Indian boxers with two of them managing to storm into the finals and two of them losing their semi-final bouts.

Vikas defeated Uzbekistan’s Hurshid Tojibaev 7-0 to make the finals where he would be facing China’s Qing Hu. Dinesh beat Nepal’s Deepak Maharjan 7-1 and set up a final clash against Uzbekistan’s Elshod Rasulov.

There was disappointment in store as Commonwealth Games gold medallists Suranjoy Singh (51kg) and Paramjeet Samota (+91kg) had to settle for the bronze medals after losing in the semifinals.

Suranjoy lost 5-6 to China’s Chang Yong in a thriller-of-a-contest, Samota was all at sea against Zhilei Zhang before the referee stopped the contest midway through the third round and awarded the bout to the home favourite.

Indian woman boxer Kavita Goyat (75kg) lost to China’s Jinzi Li in the semfinals and settled for a bronze medal. Kavita went down 1-5 to Li at the Foshan Gymnasium.

In women’s hockey, India, who had won the bronze four years back, lost to Japan 0-1 via golden goal in the bronze medal play-off match. Keiko Manabe’s 78th minute golden goal gave Japan the bronze.

The women’s men and women’s squash teams also won the bronze medal. India’s now have seven gold, 13 silver and 25 bronze. India had finished tenth on the medal rostrum in the last edition of the Games in Doha.