Services Sports Control Board (SSCB) rowers secured six gold medals at the 37th National Games Goa 2023 along the Chapora River in North Goa on Wednesday.
Services have now bagged a total of 46 medals including 26 gold. Maharashtra lead the table with a total of 130 medals including 54 gold. Haryana are in third place with 20 gold medals.
In the Rowing competition, 12 finals were held today. Apart from SSCB who swept all gold medals in the men’s category, Madhya Pradesh won three gold medals in the women’s category, while Kerala won two and Haryana won the other gold.
In the men’s quadruple sculls event, Asian Games bronze medal winning team of Satnam Singh, Parminder Singh, Jakar Singh, Sukhmeet Singh of SSCB won gold medal. Another Asian Games bronze medal winning pair of Babulal Yadav and Lekh Ram won gold for SSCB in the men’s pair event. Olympians Arjun Lal Jat and Arvind Singh of SSCB won gold in the men’s Lightweight Double Scull Pair event.
India’s number one ranked women’s tennis player Ankita Raina guided Gujarat to gold in the team event at Fatorda, South Goa. In a match of heavyweights, Ankita beat Asian Games mixed doubles gold medallist Rutuja Bhosale of Maharashtra 6-4, 6-4 to seal the gold medal for the state. Vaidehee Chaudhari had earlier beaten Vaishnavi Adkar to give Gujarat the lead in the match.
Tanya Chaudhary of UP erased the women’s hammer throw record at SAG Athletics Stadium at Bambolim. Tanya hurled the iron ball to a distance of 62.47m which was better than the 2001 National Games record of 61.59m set by Hardeep Kaur of Punjab.
Himachal Pradesh’s Seema had earlier on Monday won 10,000m gold medal and added 5000m gold to her kitty tonight. “Two gold medals will add to my confidence ahead of the challenging 2024 season,” Seema said.
Sanjivani Jadhav as expected did most of the front running. Seema, who preferred to stay on the heels of Sanjivani but surged ahead on the last lap and opened up a wide gap. Sanjivani was unable to respond and settled for silver.
In men’s 10,000m race, Ankit Kumar of Uttarakhand clocked 29:51.41 on his way to a gold medal. Abhishek Pal (Uttar Pradesh) was a long way back at 30:22.41 to clinch silver medal after a fierce battle with few metres to go to reach the finish-line, with Gulveer Singh (Services) at 30:23.13 taking the bronze medal.
Meanwhile in the men’s pole vault, 18-year-old Dev Meena of Madhya Pradesh jumped 5.16 m to win the gold and also secure a place in the U 20 Athletics World Championships to be held next year. In the event delayed by rains on Tuesday night, Kuldeep Kumar of Uttar Pradesh won silver while Anas Babu E.B of Services won bronze.
