December 9: NEW DELHI: In a rare show of excellence abroad by Indian gymnasts, a young group has bagged 17 medals, including seven golds, in a popular age-group meet at Hungary's Kiskunhalas town recently.Vikas Pandey, a ninth class student from the Allahabad Gymnastic Centre led the haul by capturing three gold medals and a bronze medal in the under-15 group.Pandey's fellow trainees Prashant Dwivedi (two golds, three silvers) and Mayank Srivastav (one gold, two silvers) also coming up with stellar performances.Maharashtra's Ranjeet Pawar was the other Indian to climb the medals rostrum bagging one gold and silver medal each in the Tulit Peter International Boys Gymnastics Championship held from December 5 to 7.Top seed cruisesCALCUTTA: Top seed Manoj Mahadevan of India kept his reputation intact with a facile victory over compatriot Rajiv Vimal to move into the pre-quarter final stage of the Duncans ITF Junior World Ranking Tennis Championship at the DKS Complex here today.Mahadevan seemed to be in no difficulty as he unleashed an aggressive brand of tennis to demolish Vimal 6-2, 6-0 in the boys section on a day which saw all the seeded players keeping their image untarnished.Bridge NationalsBANGALORE: Nearly 220 teams from India and abroad will be vying for the top honours in the 39th Bridge Nationals commencing here tomorrow.Besides top players from India, a team from Sri Lanka has already confirmed its participation.Murali joint leaderHYDERABAD: Top seed K Sasikiran produced a six-move mating combination to cash in on a blunder committed by IM Arun Vaidya while B T Muralikrishnan shocked twelfth seed Varghese Koshy in the fifth round games of the 2nd Global Trust Bank Fide-rated chess tournament at Oxford Plaza here on Tuesday.Muralikrishnan thus remained in the lead along with D V Prasad, P Mithrakanth and Rahul Shetty. All four have five points each. Sasikiran shared the second spot behind the leaders with 4.5 points alongwith K Murugan, Neeraj Mishra and overnight joint leader Sai Meera.Ratti in finalCALCUTTA: Favourite Sachin Ratti continued to impress setting up a title clash with Railway colleague Arup Baidya in the 22nd Junior National Badminton Championships at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here today.Ttop seed Divya Ramesh of Air-India will be challenged by unseeded Parul Priyadarshini in the girls' section. Ratti beat Thomas Kurien 15-9, 15-4 Badya beat Karnataka's D Guruprasad in 15-7, 15-6.
