Indians finish with a flourish
Paddlers make clean sweep as champions end with 90 gold medals
Table tennis players made a clean sweep on the final day as India ended their campaign in the 11th South Asian Games on top of the standings with 90 gold, 55 silver and 30 bronze medals here.
Madhurika Patkar notched up three individual and one team gold as Indian paddlers grabbed all the available medals to end their campaign on a high.
Madhurika joined shooters Om Prakash and Surendra Singh Rathod in bagging four gold medals each in this edition of the Games. In all, the paddlers bagged seven gold and and five silver medals.
India also had a bronze medal finish in the men’s marathon on the concluding day but it was mired in controversy as the actual distance of the marathon was seven km less than the international standard of 42.195 km.
Although the medals were distributed — gold to Nepal’s Rajendra Bahadur Bhandari, silver to Sri Lanka’s Ajith Bandara Adikari and bronze to India’s Ram Singh — the technical committee could not give a verdict on a protest filed by the Sri Lankans till late in the evening.
“The full marathon which should have been actually 42.195kms was shorter by seven kilometres. Having seen the record sub two-hour timing we lodged a protest paying USD 100,” said a Sri Lankan technical official.
Taking the bronze medal in marathon into consideration, India finish the event with a haul of 175 medals.
After a close tussle, Pakistan pipped hosts Bangladesh for the second spot in the overall standings with a haul of 19-25-36. Bangladesh finished with a haul of 18-23-56.
In table tennis, competitions were held in men’s single and women’s singles which were won by Madhurika and Soumyadeep Roy. Having bagged the women’s doubles, mixed doubles and team gold medals, Madhurika, who was seeded second, upset top seed and national champion K Shamini in a tough 4-2 finish.
Shamini struck powerful forehands and backhands but she also committed a string of unforced errors, helping Madhurika emerge champion.
The Tamil Nadu girl took the first two games 11-7, 11-8 but an error-prone Shamini conceded the next two games 10-12, 9-11.She could not recover as the Maharashtra player clinched the next two games 11-9, 11-6 to clinch her fourth gold.
In the men’s singles, Soumyadeep lived up to his top billing to deny A Amalraj a fourth gold medal.
He won 11-6, 6-11, 8-11, 11-4, 11-5, 11-9 en route to India’s seven gold medals in TT.
Closing ceremony
Bangladesh president Zillur Rahman and Army chief General M Abdul Mubin declared the 12-day event closed at colourful ceremony in the evening. Gen Mubin, who is also the Bangladesh Olympic Association president, handed over the flag and torch to his Indian counterpart Suresh Kalmadi. India will be the hosts of the 12th edition of the Games.
Traffic snarl leaves athletes stranded
Mighty Indians ran away with the lion’s share of the medals in the South Asian Games but when it came to the march-past during the closing ceremony only 11 members were in attendance with most of the other athletes stuck in a traffic jam. As the ceremony progressed, the numbers increased with many players and officials joining the squad in the middle.
“Blame it on the traffic. We had started well in advance. It really feels bad as we could not show our strength in the official march-past,” said a member of the Indian contingent on condition of anonymity.
