File image of Praggnanandhaa© Twitter
The Indian men’s and women’s chess teams won silver medals at the Asian Games in Hangzhou on Saturday. GM Harika Dronavalli, IM Vaishali Rameshbabu, IM Vantika Agrawal, and WGM Savitha Shri Baskar all won their games in a dominating fashion to beat South Korea 4-0 in the final round to finish with 15 match points. The top-seeded Chinese team won its last round match against the UAE with a 4-0 margin to take the gold with 17/18 match points. (Asian Games 2023 Medals Tally | Asian Games 2023 Full Schedule)
The Indian men finished their campaign with a 3.5-0.5 win against the Philippines.
Top seeds Arjun Erigaisi, D Gukesh, Vidit Gujrathi, and Harikrishna Pentala all won their matches against their Filipino counterparts while R Praggnanandhaa drew his game to finish second behind gold winners Iran.
Indian climbers’ campaign ends; women lose in semifinals
Indian climbers Saniya Farooque Shaikh and Shivani Charak’s challenge ended at the Asian Games as both lost in the semifinals on Saturday.
In the women’s Boulder and Lead semifinal, Saniya and Shivani finished 14th and 15th respectively, and failed to qualify for the final.
Saniya scored a total of 21.26 points (12.26 in boulder and nine in lead), while Shivani scored 20.23 (12.13 in boulder and 8.1 in lead).
The final match will be played later today at the Shaoxing Keqiao Yangshan Sport Climbing Centre.
Earlier in the speed-climbing event, India’s Anisha Verma, Shivpreet Pannu and Aman Verma had lost in the quarterfinals, while Dhiraj Dinkar Birajdar failed to enter the round of eight.
Sport climbing was included in the Asian Games at Jakarta in 2018, and India has not won a single medal in the sport at the event.
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