Kathmandu, August 30

Olympian athlete Saraswati Bhattarai missed the 1500m national record by a whisker in the 18th Asian Games at the GBK Main Stadium today.

Bhattarai completed the race in four minutes and 34.26 seconds to finish 14th out of 19 athletes. She also missed the national record of 4:33.94 set in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

On Monday, Bhattarai had produced the season best time in women’s 800m race completing the race in two minutes and 12.85 seconds. She had finished overall 13 in the 20-athlete field. Bhattarai’s previous best in 800m race was 2:13.99 in Asian Championship Heats in Bhubaneshwar, India last year, while she had completed the distance in 2:14.35 in South Asian Games in Guwahati, in 2016.

Som Bahadur Kumal’s new national record in 800m was the best performance by a Nepali athlete in the otherwise a disappointing Asian Games participation. Nepal made a horrible start with long-distance runners, Gopi Chandra Parki and Krishna Basnet failing to complete the 42.195km marathon, while Bishwarupa Budha was deprived of running in the 10,000m race because of late entry and sprinter Yam Sajan Sunar pulled out of 200m heats on medical grounds.

Judo

Two Nepali judokas faced defeats on Thursday. Olympian Phupu Lhamu Khatri lost to Ardelia Yuli Fradivtha of Indonesia in women’s below-63 kg round of 16 match, while Manita Shrestha Pradhan faced defeat at the hands of Thi Bich Ngoc Nguyen in the round of 32 bout of the women’s below-57kg weight category. Also, Sanjit Dangol lost to Sulaiman Fahad A Hamad of Saudi Arabia in men’s below-73kg Round of 32 match. On Wednesday, Indra Bahadur Shrestha and Debika Khadka were eliminated for the first round. Three remaining judokas, Poonam Shrestha, Rabin Shrestha and Shreeram Makaju will contest on Friday.

Table Tennis

Nepal faced a 3-1 defeat against Sri Lanka in the ranking round match on Thursday. Nepal lost 23-25, 25-16, 26-24, 25-21 in the 13-16 ranking match. Nepal — who had defeated Mongolia 3-1 in the quarter-final for 13-18 raking on Wednesday — will now face the winners of the match between Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam, in the 15-16 classification match on Friday.

Squash

Nepal were eliminated from the group stage of  men’s team event of squash. The team of Amrit Thapa Magar, Arhant Keshar Simha, Gyanu Chaudhary and Rajendra Shakya faced a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Hong Kong in the last Group A match. Earlier, Nepal had lost to Pakistan, South Korea and the Philippines.