Youth Olympics: Manu wins silver, men's hockey team progresses to semis

Young shooting sensation Manu Bhaker became the second Indian after judoka Tababi Devi to win two medals at the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) after winning a silver while the men's hockey team moved to the semi-finals with a 4-2 win over Poland, in Buenos Aires, on Friday.

In a unique format, Manu combined with Tajikistan's Behzan Fayzullaev in the 10m air pistol mixed international and settled for a silver after losing the gold medal match 3-10 to Germany's Vanessa Seeger and Bulgaria's Kiril Kirov.

The India-Tajik pair had on Thursday come through qualification with a score of 751. They then beat an Egyptian-Thai pair 10-4 in the round of 16 at the Parque Polideportivo Roca shooting range in the Argentine capital. They beat a pair from Lithuania and Moldova 10-8 in the quarterfinals and then overcame Andria Ibarra of Mexico and Dymtro Honta of Ukraine 10-3 in the semifinals.

The German-Bulgarian pair however started strong in the finals and was 3-0 ahead at one stage before winning 10-3 to emerge champions.

According to the format, the gold medal winner of the individual event is paired with the athlete who finished 20th in the final.

India thus wrapped up their shooting campaign with two gold and three silver medals.

Of the eight medals won by the Indian contingent so far, five are from shooting. Manu and Saurabh Chaudhary had won gold in the men's and women's 10m air pistol events, while Shahu Mane and Mehuli Ghosh had won silver in the men's and women's 10m air rifle events, earlier in the Games.

On the hockey turf, Shivam Anand (1st, 8th minutes) sounded the board twice while Maninder Singh a(3rd) and Sanjay (17th) were the other goal scorers for India in the quarterfinals of the Hockey 5s competition at the Parque Polideportivo Roca.

Poland's goals came from the sticks of Eryk Bembenek (16th) and Michal Nowakowski (18th).

The Indian women's hockey 5s team beat South Africa 5-2 in their final Pool A match to advance to the quarterfinals of the Youth Olympic Games.

The Indians finished in the second spot in their pool with 12 points, behind leaders Argentina.

Mumtaz Khan (2nd, 17th minute), Reet (10th), Lalremsiami (12th) and Ishika Chaudhary (13th) scored in India's convincing victory over South Africa on Thursday as the team ended the pool stages on a winning note after Wednesday's defeat to hosts Argentina.

On the badminton courts, title favourite Indian Lakshya Sen recovered from a game deficit to beat Kodai Naraoka 14-21, 21-15, 24-22.

Swimmer Srihari Natraj failed to qualify for the finals of the men's 200m backstroke after finishing sixth in Heat 1 with a timing of 2:04.80, which was overall 13th best. Only eight best made it to the final. 

Indian archers -- Akash and Himani -- were consistent with their shots to earn good rankings in individual events. Himani finished third in the women's recurve individual ranking event while Akash was placed fifth in the men's recurve individual event with 679 points.