TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at Fatorda is ready and shimmers in all its glory for the opening ceremony today. Goa’s TT and football prodigies will ignite the cauldron to declare the Lusofonia Games 2014.
The grand opening ceremony is billed to be a spectacle and is expected to enthrall Goa’s sports loving fans with pyrotechnics, lighting and the works. As the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru stadium spills over with high octane entertainment, all of Goa’s newly built stadiums will come alive with the best of sports activity in a battle for being higher, faster and stronger.
Lusofonia Games are a multi sport event organized by ACOLOP which involves athletes coming from Lusophone (Portuguese speaking) countries belonging to the CCLP community of Portuguese Language communities or that have a common past with the Iberian country . Over one thousands security personnel will keep watch in and around stadium to ensure incident free games .
The frantic efforts paid off and the scathing media criticism first mellowed and gradually turned into virtually paeans about the facilities which almost every participant described as good. The opening ceremony promises to be a mesmerizing event.
The Games, spread across 12 days from January 18 to 29, the biggest sporting event in the state’s history, will feature 12 countries namely Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea- Bissau, Goa (India), Macau (China), Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe and Sri Lanka. Athletes from these countries will compete in nine different sporting disciplines – Athletics, basketball, beach volleyball, football, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and wushu.
By the end of the sports extravaganza, Goa will be thanking two people who toiled hard to ensure that the Games have breasted the tape — Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and CEO Keshav Chandra.
Yes there were ups and downs, expectations and dejection at the shortfalls, but together with the spills, there will surely be thrills. Best epitomized in sports, which mimics life. There are no draws. There is victory and loss. Two sides on the same coin. That is sorts. Come on Goa, bring it on.
