World University Games: Aishwary Pratap Singh's hat-trick of gold powers India's best haul

Olympian Aishwary Pratap Singh led the show with a hat-trick of golds as shooters and archers powered India's best-ever medal haul with 17 podium finishes in the World University Games in Chengdou on Monday.

On day four of the meet the Indian University athletes claimed four gold medals (two in shooting and two in archery), one silver (shooting) and one bronze (archery). Overall, India won nine gold, three silver and five bronze to sit fourth in the medal standings behind China (17-5-4), Korea (10-10-4) and Japan (10-6-7).

India's previous best at the World University Games was in Gwangju, South Korea in 2015 when they ended up with five medals -- one gold, one silver and three bronze. Aishwary claimed a hat-trick of gold medals as the shooters took their overall tally to nine medals (6-2-1) to lead the team championship.

In the 10m air rifle men's team event, former world junior champion Aishwary won along with Divyansh Singh Panwar and Arjun Babuta, defeating hosts China with a world record score.

The trio shot 1894.7 points for the title, 7.3 points better than the previous world record set by China in 2018. China bagged the silver with a score of 1881.9 and the bronze medal went to Kazakhstan (1878.2).

Aishwary then won another gold (252.6), this time in an individual event, pipping teammate Divyansh Singh Panwar (251.0). The bronze medal went to home favourite Song Wuhan, who shot 229.

Sangampreet Singh Bisla and Avneet Kaur emerged compound University champions as archers ended their campaign with their highest-ever tally of three gold, one silver and three bronze medals.

All the three gold came in the compound section -- men's individual (Bisla), women's individual (Avneet) and mixed team (Saini and Pragati). The solitary silver too came in the compound section in the women's team event (Avneet, Purvasha Shinde and Pragati).

The compound archers also won two bronze medals -- men's team (Rishabh Yadav, Saini and Bisla) and men's individual (Saini). The recurve archers disappointed the most, bagging a solitary medal, that too a bronze by the women's team of Sangeeta, Tanisha Verma and Reeta Sawaiyan.

In table tennis, Kabir Hans from KIIT University advanced into round two of singles and mixed doubles events. In badminton, India won their third league rubber against Ukraine 5-0 with Swetaparna Panda winning the women's doubles partnering her sister Rutaparna. She also won the mixed doubles after pairing up with Viraj Vilas Kuvale.

With inputs from PTI