Khelo: Maha dominate lifting arena as national marks tumble

Maharashtradominated the first day of the weightlifting competitions at the Khelo India Youth Games 2019, winning three of the four gold medals at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex here Wednesday.

The hosts added a silver and a bronze as well to their tally while Odisha picked up one gold and one silver medal.

Tamil Nadu ended the day with one silver through famed lifter Satish Sivalingam's young cousin T Madhavan and a bronze. Arunachal Pradesh had two bronze medals and Chhattisgarh clinched one silver, a media release said.

Meanwhile, records tumbled during the day.

Maharashtra's Shubham Kolekar, who won the National Youth championship a fortnight ago, improved his own clean and jerk record by 1kg, lifting 139 kg after ensuring the he would walk home with the 55kg junior gold ahead of Muna Nayak (Odisha).

In the men's U-17 55kg category Maharashtra's Abhishek Mahajan dominated proceedings to claim the gold, followed by Subhash Lahre (Chhattisgarh) and Golom Tinku (Arunachal Pradesh).

In the mens U-17 49kg category, Bhaktaram Desti (Odisha) improved his ownmark in clean and jerk from 104kg to 105kg here winning the gold en-route, the release said.

Tamil Nadu youngsters T. Madhavan and K. Guru Kannan took the other medals.

Earlier,Soumya Dalvi and Arati Tatgunti from Maharashtra won the gold and silver medals respectivelyin the women's U-17 40kg category, while Sandiya Gungli from Arnachal Pradesh took the bronze medal.

Soumya surpassed her own record of 49kg in the snatch event set in the National Championship in Nagpur in December last by lifting 51kg. She then added a second record with a total of 111kg to better her mark of 109kg set at Nagpur.