KIYG 2023: Telangana swimmer Vritti Agarwal claims third gold as Maharashtra cross 100-medal mark

Chennai, Jan 28 (IANS) Telangana swimmer Vritti Agarwal clinched her third gold medal in the Khelo India Youth Games 2023 on a day table-toppers Maharashtra became the first contingent to cross the 100-medal mark picking a gold from shooting and two from swimming. 

At the time of writing, Maharashtra opened up a huge gap over second-placed Tamil Nadu with a tally of 37 gold, 32 silver and 40 bronze for a total of 109 medals.

Tamil Nadu stayed ahead of Haryana with their gold medal-winning performance in road cycling, girls' 100m backstroke and boys’ volleyball. They now have 29 gold, 18 silver and 30 bronze for a total of 77 medals.

Haryana could win only two of the five gold medals on offer from the wrestling arena at the Rajarathinam stadium and now have a total of 83 medals, including 29 gold, 15 silver and 39 bronze.

At the SDAT Aquatics complex, Vritti, who had bagged the girls' 200m and 800m freestyle titles on the opening day of the swimming competition on Saturday, clinched the 400m gold medal with a timing of 4:32.77 seconds. Meenakshi Menon of Karnataka (4:37.60s) and Maharashtra’s Aditi Hegde (4:39.58s) won the silver and bronze respectively.

Rajasthan’s Yug Chelani then added the boys 400m medley gold to his 200m freestyle gold with a timing of 4:38.40s with Andhra Pradesh’s Mongam Theerdu Samadev (4:40.66s) and West Bengal’s Saswata Roy (4:45.51s) bagging the silver and bronze.

At the Guru Nanak College shooting range, Maharashtra’s Isha Taksale added another gold medal to her tally with a dominant show in the final of the girls' 10m Air Rifle event.

The Panvel resident, who had won the 10m Air Rifle mixed team gold, finished with a total of 253.8 points with Madhya Pradesh’s Gautami Bhanot (253 points) and Karnataka’s Anushka Thokur (231.2 pts) bagging the silver and bronze medals respectively.

Maharashtra also added two gold medals in the swimming competition with Aditi Hegde winning the 100m butterfly while the girls’ 4x100m relay team got the gold after toppers Karnataka were disqualified as one of their swimmers jumped in the water early.

Weightlifter Sairaj Pardeshi (boys 81kg) and wrestler Sumit Kumar (boys 71kg freestyle) completed Maharashtra’s gold medal tally for the day.

Earlier, cyclist Nanda Chichakhandi of Karnataka won the girls' 20km time trials while Tamil Nadu’s Kishore N grabbed the gold medal in the 80km individual road race.

At the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor stadium, hosts Tamil Nadu got the better of defending champions Haryana 3-1 to clinch the volleyball boys team gold with West Bengal winning the girls' title with a 3-0 victory over Rajasthan.

--IANS

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