Panaji :- Sportspersons of Maharashtra have crossed a century and a half of medals with a brilliant performance at the 37th National Games on Thursday. On the strength of medals in swimming, table tennis, athletics, wrestling, Maharashtra has so far won a total of 161 medals including 60 gold, 48 silver and 53 bronze medals.Senadal (37 gold, 13 silver, 13 bronze) is second and Haryana (31 gold, 21 silver, 33 bronze) is third.
Maharashtra’s Virdhawal Khade and Palak Joshi won their second gold medal each in swimming. With these two gold medals, Maharashtra earned a total of five medals, two silver and one bronze.Diya Chitale’s double success in the table tennis sport led Maharashtra to continue its success. Diya won gold medal in mixed doubles with Sanil Shetty and silver medal in singles. Maharashtra won three medals in table tennis namely one gold, one silver and one bronze. In roll ball, the Maharashtra women’s team won the gold medal, while the men’s team won the silver medal.In athletics, Maharashtra’s Yamuna Ladkat won silver in the women’s 800m race. Similarly, taekwondo athletes from Maharashtra won three bronze medals while Nandini Salokhe won a bronze medal in the 50 kg weight category in wrestling.
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*Aquatics*
*Virdhawal Khade, Palak Joshi double Innings*
*Total five medals earned*
Maharashtra’s Virdhawal Khade and Palak Joshi celebrated a ‘double bang’ in swimming by winning their second gold medal each. With these two gold medals, Maharashtra earned a total of five medals, two silver and one bronze.
Olympian Virdhawal won the 50m butterfly race in a record time of 24.60 seconds, breaking his own record of 24.73 seconds in 2015. On Wednesday, he won the 50m freestyle race here to become the fastest swimmer. Mihir Ambre, who won the bronze medal in the same event, followed Veerdhawal to win the silver medal by completing the 50m butterfly race in 24.67 seconds.
Maharashtra’s Rishabh Das clocked 57.37 seconds to win silver in men’s 100m butterfly.
Maharashtra’s Rishabh Das clocked 57.37 seconds to win silver in men’s 100m butterfly. Olympian Srihari Natarajan (55.59 seconds) won the gold medal in this race.
Maharashtra’s Palak Joshi won gold in women’s 100m race. She covered this distance in one minute, 05.29 seconds. Earlier, she had also won the 200m backstroke title in this event. In the 50 meters butterfly race, however, Rijuta Khade had to settle for a bronze medal. She covered this distance in 28.38 seconds. She had earlier won the 50m freestyle event in the event.
*Both Maharashtra teams enter semifinals in water polo*
Maharashtra players continued their winning streak in both the men’s and women’s groups to advance to the semi-finals of the National Games in water polo.
In the men’s group, Maharashtra beat Kerala 6-4 after a tight fight. Gaurav Mahajani and Piyush Suryavanshi have performed consistently in the matches played by the Maharashtra team so far.Kerala team scored two goals in the last innings to create interest in the match but Maharashtra maintained the lead till the end and won the match. Maharashtra will face West Bengal in the semi-final. In the women’s group, Maharashtra registered a resounding victory over Karnataka 15-7. Rajshree Gugle and Pooja Kumbare played an important role for the Maharashtra team. Maharashtra will face Kerala in the semi-final. The semi-final matches of both the groups will be played on Friday.
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*Table Tennis*
*Diya Chitale’s Double Success*
*Gold in Mixed Doubles with Sanil, Silver in Singles*
*Swastika won the bronze medal*
Diya Chitale’s double success saw Maharashtra continue its success in table tennis at the National Games. Diya won gold medal in mixed doubles with Sanil Shetty and silver medal in singles. Maharashtra won three medals in table tennis, one gold, one silver and one bronze on Thursday.
Sanil and Diya Chitale of Maharashtra defeated Ankur Bhattacharya and Kaushani Nath of West Bengal by 3-0 (11-6, 11-4, 11-2).
In the women’s singles final, Diya gave Archana Komt a tough fight. But Dia lost 1-4 (4-11, 7-11, 6-11, 11-7, 10-12). Before that, Diya defeated Swastika Ghosh of Maharashtra by 4-0 in the semi-final match. So Swastika had to settle for a bronze medal.
In this year’s national sports competition, Maharashtra has won a total of eight medals in table tennis, namely three gold, one silver and four bronze. In the previous National Games, Maharashtra won five medals, one silver and four bronze.
*Reaction*
Maharashtra’s table tennis players have won eight medals in the national sports competition with a much better performance than expected. But it is regrettable that three medals were narrowly missed. Otherwise, these three more medals would have been added to Maharashtra’s account, Maharashtra’s supremacy would have been proved.
*Mahendra Chiplunkar, Coach of Maharashtra Table Tennis Team*
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*roll ball*
*Maharashtra Women’s Team wins Gold Medal ; Men’s Team wins Silver Medal in roll ball*
Mahek Raut, Akshata and Snehal Patil under the skillful leadership of Shweta Kadam led the Maharashtra team to the gold medal in Roll Ball at the National Games. The men’s team won the silver medal.
Maharashtra Women’s team defeated Rajasthan 5-2 in the final. The Maharashtra men’s team had to settle for a silver medal. Rajasthan team beat Maharashtra 7-5.
*Commendable performance of women’s team: Coach Hemangini Kale*
Maharashtra Women’s team’s performance in this year’s tournament was commendable. Due to this, the team continued its winning campaign and reached the finals. In this, the team achieved victory by performing well, the head coach Hemagini Kale praised the team.
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*Athletics*
*Yamuna Ladkat wins silver in 800m race*
Maharashtra’s Yamuna Ladkat won silver in women’s 800m race. She covered this distance in 2 minutes 3.24 seconds. Delhi player K. M. Chanda won the gold medal. It took her 2 minutes 1.74 seconds to complete the distance.
Jay Shah of Maharashtra narrowly missed out on a bronze medal in the 200 meters race in athletics itself. It took him 21.17 seconds to cover this distance. Abhin Devdiga (20.89 seconds) and V. Shashikant (20.97 seconds) of Karnataka, Animesh Kujur (20.99 seconds) of Odisha won gold, silver and bronze medals in this race.
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*Taekwondo*
*Three bronze medals for Maharashtra in taekwondo*
Maharashtra won three bronze medals in the Taekwondo category of the National Games on Thursday. Prasad Patil, Bharti More and Mrinal Vaidya bagged bronze medals from Maharashtra.
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*Wrestling*
*Bronze medal to Nandini Salokhe in women’s wrestling category*
Maharashtra’s Nandini Salokhe won a bronze medal in the 50 kg wrestling category at the National Games.
In the first round of this group, she defeated Delhi’s Deepika 6-0. She followed that up with a decisive win over Reshmi Kumari of Bihar.But in the semi-finals, she had to accept defeat from Shivani Pawar, a player from Madhya Pradesh. In the bronze medal match that followed, Nandini won decisively over Manpreet. Nandini is an athlete from Kolhapur and is training under the guidance of Dadasaheb Lavate at the Sports Authority of India training center in Murgod.
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*football*
*Maharashtra win over Meghalaya*
Maharashtra football team registered a resounding 2-1 win over Meghalaya in their second match of the national sports Games on Thursday. Mandeep Singh and Advait Shinde played a vital role in Maharashtra’s victory by scoring goals.
For Maharashtra, Mandeep scored in the 13th minute and Advait scored in the 23rd minute. Under the guidance of head coach D’Souza, the Maharashtra team had held the defending runners-up Kerala to a 2-2 draw in the previous match.
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*Hockey*
*Maharashtra women’s team lost to Jharkhand*
Maharashtra women’s hockey team lost 0-3 to Jharkhand in the national sports Games on Thursday. Albela Rani Toppo’s two goals were an important contribution in Jharkhand’s victory.
Pramodini Lakra opened Jharkhand’s account with a field goal in the fourth minute in the Group B match of the ongoing tournament at the Peddim Sports Complex hockey ground. Therefore, the Akshata Dhekle led Maharashtra team played under pressure. Then in the 21st minute of the second session, Albela extended Jharkhand’s lead to 2-0. Both teams failed to score in the third session. Albela scored his second individual goal in the 58th minute of the fourth session to make Jharkhand’s lead 3-0.
Maharashtra defeated hosts Goa 2-1 in the first match on Tuesday. Maharashtra’s next match will be against Punjab on Saturday.
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*Archery*
*Maharashtra claims two team medals in recurve*
Maharashtra’s men’s and women’s teams have strengthened their bid for gold and bronze medals respectively in recurve archery at the National Games.
The Maharashtra men’s team defeated the hosts Goa 6-0 in the ongoing tournament at the Goa College of Engineering ground. Then defeated Assam 6-2 in the second match. The Maharashtra team consisting of Yashdeep Bhoge, Shukamani Babarekar, Sumedh Mohod, Gaurav Lambe will face Jharkhand on November 6 for the title.
Maharashtra women team defeated Telangana team by 6-0 margin.But the Haryana team had to lose. Maharashtra, consisting of Manjiri Alone, Shrushti Jogdand, Sharvari Shende, Nakshatra Khode, will fight for the third position on November 6. Sameer Mhaske and Amar Jadhav are the coaches of the Maharashtra team.
