‘Golden lift’ by Jeremy Lalrinnunga and Achinta Sheuli as India gets third gold in Weightlifting

Khel Today Bureau

New Delhi: Reigning Youth Olympics champion Jeremy Lalrinnunga, all of 19, smashed two Games records enroute winning India and his weightlifting squad their second gold of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games (CWG) on Sunday.

Beaming with confidence, the 20-yr old debutant Achinta Sheuli puts up an extraordinary performance to bag 3rd GOLD for India at Birmingham 2022

Creating Games Record & winning gold with a total lift of 313kg in Men’s 73kg final. Snatch- 143kg (GR & Equalling PB)Clean & Jerk- 170kg.

Jeremy lifted a total of 300kg in the Men’s 67kg category to be a full seven kilograms clear of Samoa’s Vaipava Loane, who won silver while Nigerian Edidiong Umoafia won bronze with a total lift of 290kgs.

All of India’s three gold, two silver and one bronze medal have now come from Weightlifting with Olympic silver medallist Mirabai Chanu having opened India’s gold account on Saturday, with a second consecutive CWG gold in the Women’s 49kg.

“I am very happy for all the love that I have received from back home,” said the teenager from Aizawl, Mizoram, who went through severe pain and even picked up a muscle injury in achieving the feat,

Late on Saturday night, Bindyarani Devi had given India a second silver after Sanket Sargar had done the same. Gururaja Poojary is India’s sole bronze medal winner thus far.

Fluent first wins in Cricket and Hockey

Elsewhere India’s Women’s Cricket team picked up their first win of the tournament, beating Pakistan with a comfortable eight-wicket win. Star opening batter Smriti Mandhana did the star turn for India with a fluent 63 n.o after bowlers Sneh Rana and Radha Yadav had taken two wickets apiece to skittle Pakistan out for 99 in 18 overs.

The Indian Men’s Hockey team also began their campaign on day three of competitions, notching up an ever more dominant and fluent 11-0 win over Ghana. They were ahead 3-0 after the first quarter itself and 5-0 after the first half. Harmanpreet Singh struck a hat-trick while Jugraj helped himself to a couple of goals. Abhishek opened the scoring for the Indians while Shamsher, Akashdeep, Lalit, Mandeep and Varun Kumar were the others who got on the board. Krishan Pathak also did his bit to have a clean sheet.

Men Paddlers, Srihari through

Also, through to the quarterfinals were the Indian Men’s Table Tennis team after a comfortable victory over Bangladesh in the round of 16. They next play in the semi-finals tomorrow against Nigeria.

So was the in-form Srihari Natraj, through to the Men’s 50m backstroke semis in the pool, with a second-place finish in his Heat-6. His semi-final comes up later in the night.

Mixed bag in Boxing

World champion Nikhat Zareen got off to a flier in her Women’s 48-50kg (Light Flyweight) round of 16 bout against Mozambique’s Helena Ismail Bagao with the referee being forced to stop the contest in her favour.

However, Shiva Thapa in his 60-63.5kg (Light Welterweight) bout, went down 1-4 on points to Scotland’s Reese Lynch to end his campaign at the Games.

Other results

· In another Weightlifting class, the Women’s 59kg, Popy Hazarika could not make much headway finishing in seventh position with a total lift of 183kgs.

· In Gymnastics, Yogeshwar Singh finished 15th in the Men’s individual All-Round competition. In the corresponding Women’s event, Ruthuja Natraj also finished outside the medal positions.

· In Lawn Bowls, the Womens Four team consisting of Lovely Choubey,Pinki, Nayanmoni Saikia and Rupa Rani Tirkey beat Norfolk Island 17 – 9 to reach the Semi Finals that will be played tomorrow.

· In Squash, Joshana Chinappa reached the quarter finals by beating Kaitlyn Watts of New Zealand 3 – 0.