Manipur march unstoppable

Guwahati, Feb 13 (UNI) Manipur's juggernaut rolled on unchecked and state cyclist Rameshwari Devi emerged as the new queen of the Games sweeping away five cycling Gold as the North-Eastern state piled up 40 yellow medals leaving behind others to fight for the second and third place in the medal tally.

Services climbed up to second spot with a burst of four Gold medals from equestrian event. Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and hosts Asom also remained in hunt for a strong finish.

The National Games has become little monotonous because of complete domination of Manipur athletes in almost all events except swimming, where Delhi and Karnataka and Maharashtra are doing well.

The big news from the swimming pool was that Richa Sharma lost both her events she participated in today thus depriving herself of repeat of Hyderbad's seven-Gold feat. She did, however, managed to pick up silver today.

Manipur expectedly came out on top in almost all the contact sports, fencing, cycling and only in wrestling, the traditional North India domination continued but there also Manipuris picked up six medals, mostly through their women grapplers.

In the swimming, which entered the fourth day, Karnataka is ahead, thanks to their men swimmers with 22 medals of which nine are gold and six silver and seven bronzes. For Karnataka, Rehan Poncha picked up so far nine medals, five of which are gold medals.

If Richa and Rohan dominated the swimming pool, it was the turn of Rameshwari Devi of Manipur to turn the cycling event into her personal domain as she so far picked up five gold medals to emerge as the second most valuable players of the Games so far.

She set the Tepesia velodrome ablaze with sheer speed, agility and quick reflexes to beat all her compatriot and emerged as a future hop for Indian's cycling in the Asian arena.

More UNI