Firstpost Spodcast Episode 23: Saurabh Chaudhary's shooting gold, India win sepaktakraw bronze, and other stories from Day 3 of Asian Games 2018

Welcome to Spodcast, the sports update on Firstpost, where we do a quick run through of the big sports news of the day. In today’s episode, we talk about how 16-year-old Saurabh Chaudhary won India’s first Asian Games gold medal in shooting, India winning bronze in sepaktakraw and Divya Kakran clinching bronze in wrestling. 16-year-old Saurabh Chaudhary won India’s first gold medal in shooting at the 2018 Asian Games. He finished first in the 10m air pistol finals, with a score of 240.7. Second place went to 2010 world champion Tomoyuki Matsuda, who finished with 239.7 points. Chaudhary is now the fifth Indian shooter to win a gold at the Asian Games. He joins a list that includes shooters like Jaspal Rana, Randhir Singh, Jitu Rai and Ronjan Sodhi. He had also won the gold in June at the Junior World Cup in Germany. Abhishek Verma of India finished behind Matsuda to claim the bronze. He began steadily and improved towards the end. In the fifth series, he scored a couple of 10.7s to get into contention for a medal. He then consolidated, producing a good finish to secure third place. In the men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions event, Sanjeev Rajput recovered from an early slip to win a silver medal. 37-year-old Rajput scored 452.7, which earned him second place behind the winner, Hui Zicheng of China. The Chinese shooter scored 453.3. India won a bronze in Sepaktakraw. Sepaktakraw, also known as kick volleyball, is a sport native to Southeast Asia and dominated by Thailand, who are the defending champions. The Indian men’s team lost to Thailand 0-2 in the semi-finals. Despite losing, India picked up a bronze because both losing teams in the semi-finals are awarded medals. Wrestler Divya Kakran beat Taipei’s Chen Wen-ling to win bronze in the 68kg category. Kakran faced Wen-ling in a third-place play-off bout and won 10-0 on technical superiority. 20-year-old Kakran had also won gold at the Commonwealth Championships last year. Dipa Karmakar failed to qualify for the finals of the vault event. Only two athletes from one country go through to the finals. Karmakar finished in eighth place while compatriots Pranati Nayak and Aruna Budda Reddy finished sixth and seventh respectively. Nayak and Reddy qualified for the vault final. However, Dipa did qualify for the balance beam final. She finished seventh in the event, with a score of 12.750. In the team competition, China qualified as the top team, followed by North Korea and South Korea. India, who finished in seventh place, have qualified for the final.