Melbourne: The shooters and weightlifters led India's golden charge at the Commonwealth Games although a doping and a sex scandal took some of the sheen away from the country's campaign at the XVIII Commonwealth Games that drew to a close at Melbourne on Sunday.
On the field, India put up one of their best performances in recent times, winning a rich bounty of 22 gold, 17 silver and 11 bronze medals to finish fourth in the world's second biggest sporting event after the Olympic Games.
However, despite dourly holding on to the third spot for days, Indian slipped one rung lower in the final standings as Canada surged ahead at the end of the 12-day competitions.
Though the majority of India's 174 athletes, including 81 women, failed to end in the medals, the country is slowly coming out of the image of sporting no-hopers as was the case in previous mega events of this magnitude.
Shooting and weightlifting were expected to be the biggest contributors to the Indian medal tally but the boxers and paddlers were impressive too as they shared three gold medals between them.
Shooting:
The shooters have been working hard, especially to get as many quota places as possible for the Beijing Olympics 2008, and struck telling blows through Samresh Jung and Gagan Narang, who reaped a rich harvest of medals.
The Indian marksmen came for all round praise as they touched world class scores to overwhelm the rest of the field.
Jung was the cynosure of all eyes grabbing five gold and a silver and bronze each but was rather unfortunate not to have equalled the existing record of Australian swimming hero Ian Thorpe and Susie O'Neill, who won six gold medals each in a single Games.
Jung was one shooter whose confidence level increased each day that passed in the games even though a malfunctioning pistol denied him of a possible medal in the standard fire event on the last day of the event.
The Delhi shooter set three records - two in pairs and one in 10m air pistol - and ended the top medallist in this edition of the Games and was justifdiable named the most outstanding athlete of the Games and honoured with the David Dixon award.
Gagan Narang remained the lone Indian athlete to achieve cent per cent success.
His individual tally reads four gold medals, three of which were with new records to boot.
"We have been training and our preparation has been better," Narang said. "It shows on our performance as well."
Olympic silver medallist Lt Col Rajyavaradan Singh Rathore lost out on a gold medal in the double trap pair event due to stiff opposition coming three Olympians and a world champion but he defended his Manchester 2002 individual title in style.
In the Trap final, Rathore stood tall for the gold with a tally of 181 (137+44).
PAGE_BREAK
Vijay Kumar, Pemba Tamang, Abhinav Bindra, Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Sanjeev Rajput, Vivek Singh among men, and Tejaswani Sawant, Anveet Kaur Sandhu among women, were the other shooters to win invididual medals for the country besides
teaming with their partners for the pairs event medals.
Weightlifting:
In weightlifting, where the international federation has done away with three medals each - in snatch and clean and jerk and total - awarding only for the best total lift in a category, the number of medals won by the Indians could be seen as reduced.
But the lifters, despite Tajinder Singh and Edwin Raju returning positive dope tests, lived up to their billing.
Kunjarani Devi won the gold in the 48 kg category while two other women lifters followed suit.
Yumnam Chau (58kg) and Geeta Rani, with a new record to her credit in the 75 kg, claimed gold medals.
The silver medals were earned by Vicky Batta and Arun Murugesan, who were rather unlucky to have missed out on the gold after a tie for the top honours.
Mohammad Zakir came up with a silver medal effort and women lifters Laishram Monica Devi(69kg) and Simple Kaur (75 kg) were the other silver medallists, while Sudhir Kumar Chitradurga claimed a bronze medal.
Boxing:
The pugilists acquitted themselves well as much as the Indian paddlers, especially the women claimed their first ever medal in the Games.
In boxing, Akhil Kumar captured the bantamweight gold in style, with Vijender (welterweight) and Harpreet Singh (heavyweight) grabbing silver medals.
Jitender Kumar (Flyweight) and Johnson Varghese (Superheavyweight) collected bronze medals.
Hockey:
The women's hockey team failed to defend their Manchester Games title but they won the hearts of people, including the coach of the Australian team, for their spirited fight in the final, which they lost by a solitary goal in the 62nd minute.
Goalkeeper Helen Mary Innocent stood out under the bar coming up with several fine saves.
However, the display put out by the men's hockey team was most disappointing, for it won only two of its matches against South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago, besides sharing two goals with Malaysia.
The 1-4 loss to Pakistan was noteworthy, as the arch rivals have had the wood over them for the last two years.
India's hope of a semi-final berth was jolted by Malaysia, who made the grade on account of more goals scored in the five-team pool.
After India's golden goal loss (1-2) to New Zealand which consigned it to sixth place, coach Rajinder Singh is faced with the problem of being retained by the Indian Hockey Federation, whose functionary has made it known that they (a functionary and few selectors) will resign, if the coach is not removed forthwith.
PAGE_BREAK
Athletics:
With the well knowns like Anju Bobby George disappointing, Indian women 4x400m relay team claimed a silver by default as the winners England were disqualified for not maintaining the order in baton exchange.
The Indian management's decision to field Pinki Parmanik as the anchor and keeping Manjit Kaur as the third runner paid dividends.
After Seema Antil won the discus throw silver, Ranjith Kumar Jayaseelan claimed a bronze in the EAD event.
Table Tennis:
In table tennis, Achanta Sharath Kamal was India's mainstay as he helped win the men's team final gold while wrapping up the Games with a singles title.
The women's table tennis team won a deserving bronze medal in the team event.
Going by the performance of the shuttlers, India can look forward to Saina Nehwal as its future star.
India claimed a bronze medal through Chetan Anand in the men's singles and Saina was mainly instrumental in the country winning a bronze medal in the Mixed team event.
Swimming:
It is not fair to expect our swimmers to win medals against strong contenders, Australia, England, New Zealand and Canada boasting off Olympians ruling the roost in their events.
The Indians, in most races, finished at the bottom.
Only Arjun Muralidharan and Shikha Tandon managed to go past the heats.
Shikha Tandon was fielded in the 50m backstroke and 50m freestyle and Arjun Muralidharan in the 100m butterfly.
In the semi-final, Arjun bettered his time (56.65) but finished last.
Tandon did well to finish fourth in the 50m backstroke heats. She finished seventh in the semifinals, taking one more second (31.53) than the time she took in the heats to finish the race.
In the 50m freestyle, she finished fifth in the heats and last in the semis. The Indians took part in 11 more aquatic events, including synchronised swimming.
Other sports:
The women basketball players did a shade better than their male counterparts finishing fifth against the latter's eighth position with the sport making its debut at the Games.
The Indian gymnasts also drew a blank.
(With inputs from PTI)
Comments
0 comment