Shooters shoot down 3 more Gold, archers begin with bang

Colombo, Aug 24 (UNI) Indian archers began with a bang, claiming all three medals in women's 70m event, while their compatriot gun-slingers shot down three more shooting Gold in the ongoing 10th SAF Games here today.

In fact an Indian quintet occupied the top four positions in the archery event but Rina Kumari (320) pipped Dola Banerjee (317) and Sushma (305) to te post and had a golden kick off to her campaign in the event.

Meanwhile, Amanpreet Singh completed a shooting double today. The Indian marksman first bagged the 10m Air Rifle Gold aggregating 673.7, ahead of compatriot Om Prakash (667.9) who had to be happy with the Silver. Pakistani Mohammad Buta got Bronze (666.4) in the event.

Amanpreet (577) later joined hands with Bapu Vanjare (574) and Om Prakash (571) to total 1722 that was good enough for the team Gold in the event. Sri Lanka (1688) finished second while a Pakistani trio won the Bronze (1684).

In men's 50m Rifle Prone event too, the Indian team comprising Imran Khan (589), SS Rathod (586) and Manoj Kumar (582) aggregated 1757 for the Gold.

Imran, however, had to be satisfied with the Silver in the individual event with a total of 690.1, behind Sri Lankan Mangala Samarakoon who won the Gold with 695.2. SS Rathore finished third with 687.1.

Meanwhile, in Kabaddi league matches, Indian women beat Bangladesh by 66-20 while the men's team defeated the Bangla players 50-19.

In squash matches, Indian men beat Sri Lanka 2-1.

Gaurav Nandraj beat Navin Samarasinghe 10-8, 6-9, 9-3, 9-6 before Saman Thilakaratne equalised foir the hosts beating Harinder Paul Singh Sandhu 9-7, 9-4, 10-8. Vikas Jangra clinched the issue for India with a 9-2, 9-4, 9-0 annihilation of Anura Hewage.

UNI AY DH RS1917