India continued its dominance in the men's doubles tennis event at the Asian Games as Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan won gold after defeating the Kazakhstan pair of Aleksandr Bublik and Denis Yevseyev in the final on Friday. The Indian pair won 6-3, 6-4 in a match lasting 52 minutes.
Earlier, India won a flurry of medals on the finals day of the rowing competition at the Asian Games in Palembang on Friday to end their campaign with one gold and two bronze medals. The men's quadruple sculls team of Om Prakash, Sukhmeet Singh, Sawarn Singh and Dattu Bhokanal won gold after finishing ahead of Indonesia and Thailand.
India has now won gold in the men's doubles event at four of the last five Asian Games. Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes won in 2002 and 2006 and Somdev Devvarman and Sanam Singh won in 2010.
While this is Bopanna's first medal at the Asian Games, Sharan had won bronze in the same event with Yuki Bhambri in the last edition in Incheon.
The Indian team finished with a time of 6:17.13 while Indonesia and Thailand finished with timings of 6:20.58 and 6:22.41 respectively in the quadruple sculls event. This is the first time that India has medaled in the quadruple sculls event, which was introduced in 2014.
This is only India's second gold medal in rowing at the Asian Games. Bajrang Lal Takhar had won the first in the men's single sculls event in 2010.
India also won bronzes in the men's lightweight single and double sculls. Dushyant won bronze in the lightweight single sculls while Rohit Kumar and Bhagwan Singh won the same medal in the lightweight doubles sculls.
What does it take to win a medal at the Asian Games? Dushyant Singh stuck it out through high BP to win India's first bronze in rowing. He threw up at the prize ceremony and had to be stretchered out afterwords. pic.twitter.com/0zI3ZntcUg
- jonathan selvaraj (@jon_selvaraj) 24 August 2018
Dushyant had also won a bronze in the single sculls at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon. India has won two previous bronzes in the lightweight double sculls event in 1990 and 2006.
Dushyant finished with a time of 7:18.76 behind South Korea's Park Hyunsu and Hong Kong's Chiu Hin Chun. The double sculls team finished with a time of 7:04.61 behind Japan and South Korea who won gold and silver respectively.
Heena Sidhu wins 10m air pistol bronze
Heena Sidhu won bronze after shooting 219.2 in the final of the women's 10m Air Pistol event in Palembang. Compatriot Manu Bhaker, the other Indian in the fray, scored 176.2 to finish fifth. With four shooters left, Sidhu trailed Iran's Golnoush Sebghatollahi, who was third by just 0.1 point when the latter fumbled and scored a 9.2 and a nervy 5.3 to slip to fourth.
Sidhu, with two 10.2s on her 19th and 20th shots, assured herself of at least a bronze. After shooting an almost perfect 10.8 in the next shot, she trailed eventual gold medallist Wang Qian of China by just 0.1 point. However, a 9.8 in her final shot wasn't sufficient to close the gap. Sidhu had earlier qualified for the finals in the seventh position with 571 points while Bhaker had scored 574 to finish third. Wang scored 240.3 to set a new Games record while South Korea's Kim Minjung won silver with 237.6 points.
Sidhu is the second Indian woman to win a medal in this event at the Asian Games after Shweta Chaudhary who won bronze in 2014.