India emerge with reduced medal tally from Asian Games

The medal count went down but Indian sports still had lots to celebrate with the men's hockey team coming good after a long time to strike gold even as the legend of M C Mary Kom got bigger in a mixed Asian Games campaign for the country's athletes here.
Pistol shooter Jitu Rai and freestyle grappler Yogeshwar Dutt were among the other heroes of the Games, where the Indian contingent entered with the aim to better or equal the record medal haul of 65 fetched in 2010.
The huge Indian contingent fell short of the target and emerged with a diminished tally to its credit in this growing South Korean business hub.

India secured 11 gold medals, three fewer than what they collected in China four years ago, 10 silver (including the upgraded one of Manju Bala in women's hammer) and 36 bronze for a total haul of 57.
Four of those gold medals came in athletics (two) and kabaddi (two) while archery, boxing, hockey, shooting, squash, tennis and wrestling accounted for the rest.
The gold medal haul also placed India in the eighth position on the medals table, two rungs below where they had finished in China.

In 2010, where the country's Asian Games preparations had started earnestly with the immediately preceding Commonwealth Games hosted in New Delhi, the break-up of 65 medals won was 14 gold, 17 silver and 34 bronze earning India the sixth spot on the medals rostrum.

In 2010, a total number of 609 competitors piloted the country to a two-and-a-half-decade-high spot out of 45 countries and regions.
At the end of it all competitions here, the 541-strong Indian sporting contingent has once again secured the top 10 place out of the same number of nations and regions.
Here, the first golden touch to India's campaign, which stuttered early on before picking up some pace, came from talented army shooter Jitu Rai who handled the pressure well to nail the men's 50m pistol crown on the very first day.
The yellow metal tally got rounded off by the double team gold won in kabaddi yesterday.

However, to put the whole picture in the right perspective it should be noted that some of the gold medals came in non-Olympic sports, including the team double in kabaddi, which is hardly known even within most parts of Asia.