Shooters clinch silver, Sejwal bags swimming bronze in Asiad

The men's pistol team clinched a silver medal, while Sandeep Sejwal scooped a rare bronze in swimming but India slipped to the 16th position in the overall standings with a tally of 17 medals on the seventh day of competitions in the 17th Asian Games here today.
The pistol team, spearheaded by London Olympic Games silver medallist Vijay Kumar and including Pemba Tamang and Gurpreet Singh, clinched the second place with a total score of 1740, two behind gold medallists China, in the 25m centre fire pistol competition.
The 25-year-old Sejwal provided some much-needed boost to the Indian swimming contingent by grabbing a bronze in the 50m breaststroke event after topping his heats.

There was some more good news from the squash arena after both the men's and women's teams were assured of at least silver medals after making the finals of their respective competitions.
On the whole, it again turned out to be a day of mixed fortunes for the Indian contingent which saw its star shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap being knocked out of the singles competition along with the archers, who bowed out of the individual recurve event.
The women's hockey team kept themselves in medal contention with a 6-1 win over Malaysia.

With the addition of two more medals, India dropped a rung to 16th in the tally with a haul of one gold, two silver and 14 bronze medal so far. China continued to be at the top with 172 medals (88-47-37), followed by South Korea (31-37-35) and Japan (29-39-34).

The day started rather well with the shooters delivering a silver. In fact, had the men's trio equalled the Chinese, they would have secured a gold as their number of inner tens was much higher than their formidable rivals.
Vijay took part here despite being troubled by cervical spondylitis for which he is set to undergo surgery soon after returning home.
It was the eighth medal that the shooters have won from the Games -- one gold, one silver and six bronze medals -- all but two of them coming in team events.
Barring Jitu Rai, only Abhinav Bindra has managed to win an individual medal in Incheon, an indication of how competitive shooting has been.