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Haryana embarked on a gold collection spree to spring past Maharashtra in the Khelo India Youth Games here on Monday.
Underlining their ascendancy on the wrestling mat, their grapplers added four more gold to fatten their medal count to an impressive 16 gold, 8 silver and 16 bronze. This included a couple of crucial gold in weightlifting and one each in shooting, yoga, cycling and gatka. Defending champions Maharashtra, who had taken the lead on Day 1, were left gasping in the second place with 13 gold, 6 silver and 7 bronze at the time of writing. Manipur, who collected six gold in thang-ta over two days, were third after picking an additional gold in cycling. Jammu and Kashmir created a stir by winning their first gold in the traditional martial art discipline, with Sumit getting the better of Madhya Pradesh's Ashish in the Phunaba Anishuba 60kg category. Haryana wrestlers have expectedly been in devastating form on home turf. They had bagged all 5 gold on the opening day of the competition and seemed set for another clean sweep on Day 2, especially with two of the five final bouts being all-Haryana affairs. But Chandigarh's Yashveer Malik had other plans. Displaying strong defensive skills, he defeated Nishant 6-2 in the Greco Roman 65kg final. It all began with Suraj defeating Maharashtra's Vishwajit More by technical superiority. Ravinder too came up against a tough opponent in Maharashtra's Ajay Kapade in the freestyle 60kg final. But he kept his cool under pressure for an 11-8 victory. In the weightlifting arena, Bengai Tani opened Arunachal Pradesh's gold medal account with a total lift of 264 kg in the Boys 67 kg weight category. Tamil Nadu's T Madhavan (Boys 61 kg) and Haryana's Usha (Girls 55kg) were among the podium toppers in their respective weight categories. Haryana also finished 1-2 in the 10m Air Pistol event at the Karni Singh Shooting Range in Delhi, with Shiva Narwal bagging the gold, Samrat Rana winning silver and Uttar Pradesh's Sahil clinching the bronze. (ANI)
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