New shooting sensation Jitu Rai provided the first gold medal, while Shweta Chaudhry clinched a bronze as India launched their campaign in the 17th Asian Games with two medals on the opening day of the competitions here today.
While Jitu struck gold in the 50m pistol event, Shweta's bronze came in the 10m air pistol competition at the Ongnyeon Shooting Range here but medal aspirants Heena Sidhu and Malaika Goel turned out to be disappointments as they failed to even reach the finals.
It was a reasonably good start for the Indian contingent, bagging a gold on the very first day of the Games, considered to the second biggest after the Olympics.
While the shooters stole the limelight, athletes in other sports also began their campaign on a bitter-sweet note.
Star shuttlers Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu hammered their respective rivals in straight games as India clinched a 3-0 triumph over Macau China to enter the women's team event quarterfinals.
However, the men's team was outplayed by South Korea 0-3. K Srikanth and Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Parupalli Kashyap went down in contrasting fashions while the doubles team of Sumeeth Reddy and Manu Attri also failed to come good.
The Indian women's tennis team was also off to a winning start as it blanked Oman 3-0 in the first round here.
Prarthana Gulabrao Thombare and Ankita Raina notched up contrasting singles victories before the pairing of Natasha Marie Anne Palha and Rishika Sunkara was handed a walkover in the doubles match.
But the star of the early proceedings was undoubtedly Armyman Jitu. The 27-year-old showed steely grit to get the better of a strong field, which included two-time Olympic champion Jin Jongoh of South Korea, to snatch the gold off the final shot in a straight duel with Vietnamese rival Nguyen Hoang Phuong.
The Vietnamese, in fact, was leading the Indian ace, who had recently won the gold at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and a silver at the Granada World Championships going into this competition. But the Indian clinched the issue on the last shot.
Jitu shot 8.4 after his rival had fumbled with a poor 5.8 to win the gold with an overall tally of 186.2, as compared to Nguyen's 183.4.
