Friday, October 8, 2010

India's biggest medal haul in sight at Commonwealth Games

NEW DELHI: Six gold medals on Friday - the halfway mark of the 2010 Commonwealth Games - took India's gold tally to 20 and ensured that it is well on its way to overhauling its best-ever medal haul at the Games.

With a certain Gagan Narang on fire and more medals expected in the coming days, India could easily trump the previous high of 30 gold medals, earned in Manchester eight years ago.

Incidentally, that haul was inflated by the fact that each weight category of weightlifting awarded three gold medals, a practice that has been discontinued since then.

Narang picked up his third gold medal in the competition on Friday and looks good for at least three more.

Over the next two days, Dola Banerjee and Deepika Kumari in the women's individual recurve event, and Jayanta Talukdar and Rahul Banerjee in men's recurve could fetch India gold.

Sushil Kumar (66kg) leads India's gold hopes in men's freestyle wrestling, while Yogeshwar Dutt (60kg), Anuj Kumar (84kg) and Anil Kumar (55kg) are the other contenders.

Tennis could also see gold in the individual events if Sania Mirza and Somdev Devvarman stay true to their rankings. National record holder Sarabjit and Monika Devi (75kg) too are strong gold medal prospects in weightlifting.

All of which should see India canter past the mark of 30, and help it as it battles to keep the second spot against an increasingly intense challenge from England.

India's medal winners on Friday
Gold (6)

Silver (5)

Bronze (3)

India's total tally so far: 20 (G)-16 (S)-12 (B) = 48


TOI

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