Jharkhand, UP men get gold medals in gymnastics

Asian Games bronze medallist Ashish Kumar won the gold in the ring event while Jharkhand's Partho Mandal snapped the yellow metal in the Pommel Horse competitions of the 34th National Games' gymnastics event at the Khelgaon here on Sunday.

Kumar topped the ring event with 13.825 points, pipping Andhra Pradesh's Rajshekhar Reddy (13.6) to secure his second gold medal of the ongoing games. On Saturday Kumar won the all round individual gold medal.

Rakesh Patra of the SSCB settled for the bronze in the ring event.

Kumar, however, fell behind Mandal in the Pommel Horse. Mandal got the gold with a score of 13.475 as against Kumar's 12.575 points.

Raja Roy of SSCB (12.225) won the bronze in this event. Dipa Kamakar, who also won the girls all round individual gold medal on Saturday, snatched the yellow metal in the balanced beam scoring 13.7 points while West Bengal's Debjani Samanta (11.225 points) finished second to get the silver. Andhra Pradesh's B Aruna Reddy got the bronze in the event. Seven more gold medals are up for grabs on the last and final day of the gymnastics competition.

Continuing her spectacular performance, Tripura's Dipa Karmakar clinched three more gold medals in girls' table vault, uneven bars and floor exercises, giving her a total of five gold medals in the ongoing Games.

"This is the first time that I have participated in a National Games, and I am very happy to have won five gold medals. The credit goes to my father and coach for grooming me as a gymnast," an elated Dipa told PTI soon after winning her fifth gold medal.

Dipa scored 13.95, 11.125 and 12.6 points to win golds in the table vault, uneven bar and floor exercises respectively. Pranati Naik of West Bengal won the silver with 13.162 points in table vault while Andhra Pradesh's B Aruna Reddy finished third with 13.10 points to take the bronze.

In the uneven bars, Maharashtra's Vandita Raval (10.70) took the silver while Punjab's Minakshi (9.85) settled for the bronze.

Minakshi also got silver in the floor exercises with 12.4 points while Bengal's Debjai Samanta won the bronze. In the men's floor exercises, Pawan Bhambore excelled by scoring 13.725 to pick the gold medal while SSCB's Zia-ur-Rahman (13.60) and UP's Ashish Kumar (13.275) finished with silver and bronze medals respectively.

In the men's Table Vault, Zia-ur-Rahman (14.675) dazzled to snatch the gold medal, leaving UP's Ashish Kumar (14.20) and Andhra's Rajshekhar Reddy (13.925) for silver and bronze medals respectively.

So far eight of the 10 gold medals scheduled for the day have been settled.

The last two gold medals of the day were picked up by Uttar Pradesh's Iqrar Hassan and SSCB's Raja Roy in horizontal bar and parallel bars respectively.

Rakesh Patra (SSCB) and K V Suresh (AP) won the silver and bronze medals respectively in the horizontal bar while Mayank Srivastav and Aditya Singh Rana, both from UP, secured the silver and bronze medals in the parallel bars competitions.

A total of twenty gold medals, in both men and women, were decided over the last three days in the National Games at the Ganpat Rai Indoor Stadium in Ranchi.