PANJIM: Sporting events are mainly conducted for the athletes to prove their mettle and leave a mark for themselves. The 35th National Games in Kerala was one such stage but Goa performed badly, securing only 11 medals from the total 1,334 up for grabs.
The result, Goa finished in the 25th place in the 32 teams medal standing tally with a lone gold, three silver and seven bronze. However, the Goa contingent consisted of 84 athletes and took part in 12 disciplines out of the total 35 categories.
Goa’s performance had gone bad to worse as they finished a respectable 16th place in the 2011 Games in Jharkhand with five gold, five silver and six bronze medals with a total medal tally of 16 medals.
The State will play hosts to the next edition of the Games which is likely to be in November, 2016 and it is a matter of great concerns to improvise on the performances on home soil.
Herald will be analyzing the team’s performances each day with four disciplines, starting from today.
Beach Volleyball: It was one of the newest disciplines introduced at the Games in which Goa secured their first medal as both teams made it to the semi-finals. There a total of 13 States taking part in this event with 56 athletes. Goa was represented by only four in the men’s team event.
Goa’s team of Rama Dhawaskar and Pralhad Dhawaskar got the better of their Goan counterpart Aaron Pereira and Anil Shirodkar in the play-off match with a score line of 22-20, 13-21 and 15-18. Andhra Pradesh were the eventual gold medallist as Telangana settled for the silver medal.
Gymnastics: Goa’s Bharat Nagarkoti and Bapi Roy were the only two medal hopes. But the duo faced stiff competition from 215 athletes failing to impact in a big way.
Athletics: There were high hopes in this discipline which made up the third largest group consisting of 14 athletes (11 men and three women) in the Goa squad. However, they failed to acquire a single medal. Anik Naik failed to make it past the qualifying stages in the 100m event. Andy Fernandes finished second in the qualifying round of the 200m event but could only manage a sixth place finish in the semi-final.
Prajwal Shetty finished third in the 400m qualifying and finished sixth in the semi-final.
However, Goa did make it to the final of the men’s 4x400m relay but to their dismay they finished last.
Weightlifting: Mahalingam Kanan was the lone Goan hope in this event who competed only in the 85kg category.
However, the latter could not register any score in the snatch, clean and jerk categories. He thus finished in the last position.
