Asian Games 2026: Indian fencers Bhavani, Shreya bow out in R16 women's sabre individual

Aichi-Nagoya: Olympian BhavDevi ended her fencing campaign at the ongoing Asian Games 2026 in the round of 16 in the women's sabre individual event on Thursday.

Bhavani made it to the knockout stages with a 5-4 win over Kazakhstan's Aigerim Sarybay and a 5-2 victory against Thailand's Arisara Somphao, as per Olympics.com.

The Olympian faced three losses in the pool stage to South Korea's Jeongmi Kim (5-1), Iran's Najmeh Sazanjian (5-4) and Uzbekistan's Zaynab Dayibekova (5-4). But it took two must-win matches to send her to the round of 32, where she beat Mongolia's Oulen Tugsjargal 15-8.


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However, she was knocked out in the women's sabre individual event in the pre-quarters, with a defeat to China's 2026 Worlds silver medallist Rao Xueyi 15-5.

The other round-of-16 entrant was Shreya Gupta, who went down to Paris Olympics 2024 silver medallist Jeon Ha-young of South Korea 15-6.

Earlier, Roshibina Devi secured her second consecutive silver medal at the Asian Games, losing to China's Zhang Xiaoyu in the women's sanda 60 kg final at Aichi-Nagoya on Thursday. Earlier, the pairing of Satnam Singh and Salman Khan secured a bronze medal in the men's double sculls final on Thursday.

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Roshibina, also a 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games silver medalist, lost both rounds by a 0-5 scoreline, and the Chinese opponent sealed the match 2-0, as per ESPN.

Roshibina enjoyed an impressive run in Japan, which included beating 2023 world champion Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy of Vietnam.

On Wednesday, Roshibina defeated Indonesia's Thania Kusumaningtyas 2-0 in the semi-final to secure her place in the title clash.

This is India's 14th medal at the ongoing event, having already won a gold, adding the sixth silver to the tally. India has also won seven bronze medals so far.

Coming to rowing, Satnam-Salman clocked a time of 6:13.25, just 3.48 seconds short of China's gold medalists Yi Xudi / Nie Yide and 2.76 seconds behind the silver medalists Mekhrojbek Mamatkulov / Pavel Sorin, as per ESPN.

Satnam-Salman maintained the second position at 500m, 1000m and 1500m but fell away towards the end. At one point, they were just half a second behind the Chinese pair.

In men's singles sculls competitions, Balraj Panwar missed out on a medal, finishing fourth. Balraj managed to stay second at the 500m, 1000m and 1500m marks, but later found himself outdone by Shakhboz Kholmurzaev of Uzbekistan and Tatsuya Sakurama of Japan during the final 500 m stretch, and he lost the medal.

Balraj maintained a five-second lead over Sakurama ahead of the final stretch but finished eight seconds short of him, clocking a time of 6:54.80, 15 seconds behind the gold medalist Zhiwei Deng of China.