PANAJI
Kareena Shirodkar created history in her very first pencak silat competition to help Goa clinch their second gold medal of the 37th National Games on Sunday.
The 23-year-old, who recently completed her bachelor’s degree in law and wants to be a criminal lawyer, dominated Jammu and Kashmir’s Jiya Choudhary 30-15 to clinch the gold medal in the Tanding Female 80-85 kg category at the Campal Sports Village.
With her family and entire Goa team cheering her, Shirodkar looked confident from the start, opening up an 11-8 lead in the opening round and never looked back.
“I am very happy that I could win the gold medal for Goa in my very first competition. I love martial arts and started learning this sport just over a month ago and loved it,” said Shirodkar, who has already represented the state at the national level in taekwondo.
Asked what made her shift to pencak silat when taekwondo is also part of the National Games, the Miramar resident said she basically loves to learn new martial art forms and decided to learn this sport as it is also a combat sport.
Goa has had considerable success in pencak silat at the National Games with the hosts adding seven bronze medals in Tanding through Anslet Sebastian (female 55-60 kg), Chloe Furtado (female 75-80 kg), Asha Naik (female 65-70 kg), Mohd. Irfan Khan (male 65-70 kg), Ganpatrao Desai (male 75-80 kg) and Sagar Palconda (male 85-90 kg) and Siraj Khan (Male 90-95 kg).
