Khelo India School Games: Maharashtra Move On Top With 24 Golds
Day Highlights:
- Maharashtra have 24 golds
- Haryana and Delhi are 2nd and 3rd
- The two have 23 and 22 golds
With just one day left for the first Khelo India School Games, Maharashtra continued their upward run as they moved top of the standing. They added two golds in Judo to take their total tally to 24 gold medals. It was a good day for Maharashtra who with 24 medals piped Haryana to move first in the table ahead of Haryana who has 23.
After dominating in all the wrestling categories, Haryana stamped their authority on Judo too as they picked up gold in the boys 50kg and girls 40kg event.Priya and Harish triumphed in the respective categories to increase Haryana’s gold medal tally from 20 to 22 and ensure that the sports crazy state maintained their pole position. Maharashtra got two gold medals which came in weightlifting. Trupti Mane won the girls 58kg and Jeremy came first in the 62kg to see Maharashtra move to the second position in the standings. The other main events of the day saw Haryana go to the finals of the girl’s football event after defeating West Bengal 8-0 and Punjab went through to the men’s final after winning 3-1 in the semi-final.
With Khelo India School Games a revolution for sports in the country, everything hasn’t been so rosy though. Less participation has resulted in some games not being as big a success as was anticipated by the organizers. Several categories of wrestling saw only 6-8 contestants taking part. The real surprise was the participation of only three children in the 42kg freestyle wrestling event. Khelo India CEO Sandeep Pradhan, however, maintains that the reason for less participation in some events has been due to new categories being introduced this year itself. “Both SGFI and WFI told us that these are new weight categories introduced by the international federation, so sending wrestlers in those categories would be difficult.” The WFI, in turn, blamed the KISG, saying it didn’t allow participation of wrestlers approved by them. “WFI had sent the names of 136 wrestlers, but about 100 could not participate because KISG said we had delayed the list,” said WFI secretary general V N Prasood.
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