Rajkot, Oct 6: Madhya Pradesh’s Advait Page and Kerala’s Sajan Prakash stole the limelight as they won their third respective gold medal in the swimming pool at the National Games here on Thursday.
Maana Patel also delivered her second gold for Gujarat in swimming at the Sardar Patel Aquatics Complex here.
West Bengal recurve archer Atanu Das also captured attention when he won the men’s individual gold, beating Gurcharan Besra (Services) 6-4 at the Sanskardam Sports Complex near Ahmedabad. His celebratory roar could be heard at a distance.
Services remained on top of the medal table with 41 gold, 28 silver and 26 bronze for a total of 95. Haryana won four of the five gold medals in archery to consolidate their second place with 29 gold.
Maharashtra (24) closed in on Services as far as total medals are concerned with 93 so far.
Advait Page’s superior endurance and finishing speed earned him the 800m freestyle gold in a stunning manner in a close race. Trailing Aryan Nehra (Gujarat) and Sajan Prakash for all but the final few meters, he shot past them to be the first to the wall.
Later, Sajan Prakash bossed the 50m butterfly to complete a sweep of the three events in the stroke.
With victories in the 100m backstroke finals, Olympians Maana Patel and Srihari Nataraj picked up their second individual gold medals each.
B Sai Praneeth (Telangana) justified his top billing by taking the men’s singles gold after battling Mithun Manjunath (Karnataka). He won 21-11, 12-21, 21-16 while, mixed doubles pair Ashwini Ponnappa and K Sai Prateek won 21-16, 21-13 over Rohan Kapoor and Kanika Kanwal (Delhi). (PTI)
