SWIMMING:
Sajan Prakash finishes 25th in 200m butterfly heats, fails to qualify for semis
Indian veteran swimmer Sajan Prakash ranked 25th overall in the 200m butterfly heats at the FINA World Championships in Budapest on Monday. The 28-year-old swimmer from Kerala finished with a timing of 1:58.67s and failed to qualify for the semifinals, with only the top 16 placed swimmers making the cut.
Sajan's coach Pradeep Kumar told Sportstar prior to the race that the Indian had injured his shoulder in April and his main focus is the Commonwealth Games." We know that in the World Championship, he would stand at 20th-22nd spot. There’s no chance of competing in the semifinals or finals. However, in CWG, he is anywhere between third and fifth place, so we are looking forward for him to peak during the CWG,” said Kumar.
READ | FINA World Championship 2022: All you need to know, Indians participating, schedule
The home crowd favourite Kristof Milak was placed first overall in the heats with a timing of 1:54.10s. The Hungarian is almost four seconds away from breaking his own world record.
Team Sportstar
Kushagra Rawat finishes 23rd in 800m freestyle heats, fails to qualify for finals
India's Kushagra Rawat ranked 23rd overall in the 800m freestyle heats at the FINA World Championships in Budapest on Monday. The 22-year-old swimmer finished with a timing of 8:15.96s and failed to qualify for the finals, with only the top eight placed swimmers making it through.
Mykhailo Romanchuk of Ukraine was placed first overall in the heats with a timing of 7:44.75s.
Team Sportstar
TABLE TENNIS
83rd Junior and Youth Table Tennis Championships: Payas Jain in focus
Defending champion and world number three Payas Jain (Delhi) will be the star attraction in the under-19 category as the boys events of the 83rd Junior and Youth Table Tennis Championships gets underway at the YMCA TT Arena on Tuesday.
Payas has shown consistent form in the tournaments he has played this season and it will be tough for his opponents to prevent him from doing an encore here.
Payas' team-mate and world number 34 Yashansh Malik is also in the fray and if form plays true the two will meet in the final. Rajesh Patil (Maharashtra), Ankur Bhattacharjee (Bengal) and Varun Shankar (Telangana) are the other players to watch out for.
In the under-17 category, Bengal Ankur Bhattacharjee, the top-ranked player, starts as the favourite. UP's Divyansh Srivastava and Maharashtra's Jash Modi, K.J. Akash (Karnataka) and Bengal's Shankhadip Das are other seeds in the pecking order. Two hundred and twelve players have given their entries for the under-17 category while 209 players will compete in the under-19 section.
The players have been divided into 56 groups and the group winners will join the eight ranked players who have been given direct entry into the main draw. The performance in this tournament will be the criterion for the selection of the Indian team for the Asian Junior Table Tennis championships.
Praveen Chandran
TENNIS
India's singles players yet again failed to cross the qualifying hurdle at the Grand Slam stage as both Ramkumar Ramanathan and Yuki Bhambri exited the Wimbledon championships with first round defeats.
Bhambri lost to top seed from Spain Bernabe Zapata Miralles 5-7, 1-6 while Ramkumar fell 5-7, 4-6 to Czech Republic's Vit Kopriva on Monday night.
- PTI
ITF women's tournament
Ankita Raina has been seeded third and will open against compatriot Vaidehi Chaudhari in the USD 25,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament being played at the Tennis Project, Baliawas.
After having competed in all the four Grand Slams last year in doubles, and the Australian Open qualifying event this season, Ankita has returned to the grind of the ITF professional circuit.
It is in this circuit that players build themselves for the bigger events. Emma Raducanu’s biggest title was winnng the USD 25,000 ITF women’s event in Pune in 2019, before she emerged the women’s champion at the US Open last year.
Ankita herself had won two titles every year at this level from 2018 to 2020, and would be keen to get back to the higher echelons of the game with a good show in the two weeks at home. Ankita did make the quarterfinals last week in Thailand in a similar event, and had made the quarterfinals of a USD 60,000 event as a qualifier early this season in Australia.
Karman Kaur Thandi is the only other Indian player seeded, at No. 8, and will play compatriot Sahaja Yamalapalli in the first round.
With the final qualifying round slated for Tuesday, the top players will get one more day to get acclimatised to the conditions, especially through the doubles matches, before they step on court for singles.
In the second qualifying round, 15-year-old Sahira Singh, playing her maiden international tournament, showed courage of conviction and an athletic game to beat top seed Farhat Aleen Qamar 6-4, 3-6, [12-10], surviving two match points.
- Kamesh Srinivasan
SHOOTING - Kumar Surendra C'ship
Rajkanwar Singh Sandhu won the gold in the junior men’s 25-metre sports pistol event in the 20th Kumar Surendra Singh shooting championship at the Madhya Pradesh Academy in Bhopal on Monday.
He shot 586, and equalled the record set by Vijayveer Sidhu in 2019.
- Kamesh Srinivasan
CYCLING - Asian Track Cycling Championship
World junior champion and Asian record holder Ronaldo Singh Laitonjam clocked 1 minute 1.798 seconds to win the bronze medal in the 1-kilometre time trial of the Asian Cycling championship at the Indira Gandhi Velodrome on Monday.
It was the country’s first ever medal in the event. Yuta Obara of Japan (1:01.118) and Mohammad Fadhil (1:01.639) won the gold and silver.
The second bronze medal for the host came through Birjit Yumnam in the 10-kilometre Scratch race in the junior men’s section. Hwarang Kim of Korea and Zulfahmi Aiman of Malaysia won the gold and silver, respectively.
India was fifth in the medals table with three silver and 11 bronze medals. In the para section, India was third behind Thailand and Japan, with two gold, two silver and two bronze medals.
- Kamesh Srinivasan
WRESTLING
Indian women wrestlers win 4 gold, 1 bronze at Asian U-17 Wrestling Championship
The Indian cadet women wrestlers clinched four gold and a bronze at the under-17 Asian Wrestling Championship in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Mushkan (40kg), Shruti (46kg), Reena (53kg) and Savita (61kg) won the gold medal, while Mansi Bhadana (69 kg) secured a bronze medal at the competition.
In Greco Roman, Ronit Sharma (48 kg) claimed the yellow metal, while Pradeep Singh (110 kg) and Mohit Khokar (80 kg) bagged the silver and bronze medals respectively.
The remaining bouts in five weight categories of women wrestling and three weight categories of free style will be held on Tuesday.
- PTI
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