First day of fencing at the 2011 National Games, India - Part 1
Fencing after a lot of delays and mishaps finally commenced on February 21 at the 34th National Games in Sheikh Bhikhari Administrative Block, Mega Sports Complex in Ranchi.
The first day covered total four events in which the Women Epee team and Men’s individual foil event were concluded with the results discussed as follows.
In the elimination round of the Women Epee Team, four face-offs were conducted namely Punjab versus Jharkhand, Chandigarh versus Andhra Pradesh, Manipur versus Himachal Pradesh and Kerala versus Maharashtra. The four teams that made it to the semi-finals were Punjab, Chandigarh, Manipur and Kerala with the respective score wins of 45-13, 45-39, 45-19 and 36-31. These four then competed in the semi-final round to qualify for the final spot.
These four were divided into two pairs namely Punjab versus Chandigarh and Manipur versus Kerala for the semi-finals. Among the two pairs, Punjab won over Chandigarh by 45-15 and Manipur defeated Kerala by 45-35, hence, qualifying for the final round.
This tough fight concluded in the favour of Manipur women scoring the first 45 hits over Punjab epeeists and winning gold at points score lead of 45-34 over Punjab.
The second event of the day was Men’s Foil Individual event that had two pools, A and B, and a total of nine preliminary bouts were played among 18 individuals from various states. Pool A commenced only three bouts having three states namely Chandigarh, Manipur and Services (SSCB), whereas Pool B commenced the rest six preliminary bouts with individuals from Jammu Kashmir, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh.
The first match was played between Gaurav Gupta from Chandigarh and Kripal Singh from Services in which Gaurav won by 5-3 point score. Gaurav played another bout against Rajeshwor Singh Thounaojam of Manipur and lost by the decider point at 4-5. However, Rajeshwor confronted Kripal Singh and managed another win at 3-2, thus, qualifying for the semi-final round. With two seeds taken up by Gaurav and Rajeshwor, the semi-final was left with two more to be secured by winners from the preliminary rounds.
The third seed was soon catered by the Andhra Pradesh foilist named Tukaram Mhatre who won three bouts against Ranchan Sabarwal of Jammu Kashmir by 5-1, Ajay Kumar Shou of Jharkhand by 5-0 and Vijay Kumar of Services by 5-4, advancing into the semi-finals undefeated.
Left with only one spot for semi-final, three more bouts were played out of which Vijay outshined won two fights played against Ranchan by 5-1 and Ajay by 5-0, hence, making it into the semi-final bout.
Gaurav fought against Tukaram whereas Vijay combated Rajeshwor in a three-bout semi-final round. Among the four, Tukaram luckily got the decider point at 15-14 whereas Vijay received a huge win of 13-10, both making it to the final round for a face-off.
The gold medal was won by Vijay from Services with a point score of 15-12 against Tukaram of Andhra Pradesh, who secured a silver medal. The bronze medal was won by both the runners-up of the semi final round namely Rajeshwor and Gaurav.
The other two events namely Men’s Epee team and women individual foil event were conducted on the same day, February 21 and the results have been discussed in detail in part 2 of the article.
Tags: