India creates history in Asian Para Games, takes tally to record 80 medals with 2 days left

Hangzhou: Indian para athletes on Thursday created history by winning the highest number of medals in the Asian Para Games, taking country's tally to 80, including 18 gold medals.

India have now gone past the earlier best of 72 achieved in the 2018 edition in Indonesia.

India's medal tally read 18 gold, 23 silver and 39 bonze, and the count will keep on increasing till the end of the fourth day of competitions.

With two more days left in the Games, the country is on course to achieving its target of 100 medals in this Hangzhou edition.

India had won 72 medals (15 gold, 24 silver, 33 bronze) in the last edition in Jakarta which was the best before this Hangzhou Games.

Sachin Sarjerao Khilari won the first gold of the day in men's F46 shot put with a Games record throw of 16.03m while Rohit Kumar took the bronze with 14.56m.

Para shooter Sidhartha Babu then bagged another gold in R6 mixed 50m rifle prone SH1 event as he shot an Asian Para Games score of 247.7.

The compound mixed team of Sheetal Devi and Rakesh Kumar won a gold after defeating their Chinese counterparts Lin Yueshan and Ai Xinliang 151-149 in the final.

India also won a bronze medal in archery men's doubles W1 event with the pair of Adil Mohamed Nazir Ansari and Naveen Dalal defeating the Kazakh pair of Nurshat Toleukassym and Sagdat Duisembayev 125-120.

Simran and Bhagyashri Madhavrao Jadhav won a silver each in women's T12 100m and women's F34 shot put respectively. Simran clocked 26.12 seconds while Jadhav cleared 7.54m. Narayan Thakur won a bronze in men's T35 100m with a time of 14.37 seconds. Shreyansh Trivedi also took a bronze in men's T37 100m with a time of 12.24 seconds.

In para badminton, Sukant Indukant Kadam (men's singles SL4), Sivan Nithya Sumathy (women's singles SH6), Manisha Ramadass (women's singles SU5), Mandeep Kaur/Manisha Ramadass (women's doubles SL3-SU5), Krishna Nagar/Sivarajan Solaimalai (men's doubles SH6) and Pramod Bhagat/Sukant Indukant Kadam (men's doubles SL3-SL4) won a bronze medal each after losing their respective semifinal matches.

In chess, Bhaveshkumar Rathi Himanshi picked up a bronze in women's individual standard VI-B1 event.