Equestrian: Sthavi Asthana emerges champion in individual category at National Eventing Championship

New Delhi: Sthavi Asthana emerged champion in the individual category of the National Eventing Championship, here at the Army Polo and Riding Centre on Monday.

It is the second consecutive podium finish for Asthana in the two-leg national event, having finished third in the first leg of the championships. Ashish Malik finished second and his joy was doubled as he also earned a podium finish in the team event, finishing third.

Asthana copped four penalty points in the jumps section, the error coming on obstacle number 10A. He also conceded four penalty points in show jumping but did not concede any time penalty and also excelled in the Dressage and Cross Country section, logging 36.9 points.

Malik, on the other hand, copped two penalty points (Time) but was clean in jumps. He finished Dressage and Cross Country with 38.9 points.

Asthana and Malik were joined by Raju Singh (42.5) on the podium after he secured the third position. Prince Sharma (56.4) was a distant fourth.

However, Prince had the solace of winning the team championship alongside Vimal Kumar, Pradeep Kumar and K Mahesh. Competing as team RVC C and College, the quartet finished the competition with 198.6 points.

The winners were much ahead of the second-placed team comprising Ankit Tyagi, HS Tomar, Saurabh Kumar and Sachin Chandel. They finished with 243.6 points but interestingly, they were also from the RVC C and College team.

The third place went to the Team ASC Centre North that had Sandeep, Narayan Singh, Ashish Malik and Mahendra Singh. They logged 244.9 points.