India dominates 3rd edition of Lusofonia games

Tarun Gupta

The Lusofonia Games are a Portuguese equivalent of the British Commonwealth Games. The team from Goa, a former Portuguese colony, includes sportspersons from the rest of India.

The 12-day sporting event from 18^th-29^th Jan featured countries like Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Goa (India), Macau (China), Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sri Lanka.

Competitions being held in nine disciplines - athletics, basketball, beach volleyball, football, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and wushu.

In Table Tennis, India finished at the top of the medals tally, making the country proud as they put up their best performance so far, took their total medals tally to six gold, two silvers and three bronze medals in table tennis at Peddem ground in Mapusa.

Indian paddlers with this have Portugal, who dominated the table tennis event in the two editions of the games, had to bite the dust who were no match to India as their only gold came in men's doubles final, taking their overall tally to one gold, four silvers and a bronze.

Starting with the team events, India made an excellent start by winning gold in both men’s and women’s category. 

Just a couple of hours after the women bagged the gold medal; the men were not far behind. In a 3 hour, 5 game, 18 setter nail biting game, the Indian men’s table tennis team emerged winners against Portugal.

None of the players left their guard down even for a moment. The neck to neck competition resulted in a 3-1, 2-3, 3-2, 3-1 win for India. The sparks of the Indian players’ glory translated in an epic win over the Portugal force.

The electrifying game got the crowd screaming and chanting the entire time. The immense support by the Indian audience gave the players a huge boost in times when Portugal had their score sprints.

The team Harmeet Desai, Soumyajit Ghosh and Amalraj Anthony with the support of Coach Peter Engel rushed through the winning points with a loud roar of the crowd and grabbing the gold medals.

On the other hand womens final was one sided as they defeated Sri lanka in straight sets to claim their maiden Lusofonia games title. India winning all their league matches grabed gold while Portugal and Srilanka settled for silver and bronze respectively.

In the individual events of both men and women it was India-India final.

Where in womens it was a clean sweep as all the three medals won by Indian women.

Shamini Kumaresen won gold medal for India, beating her colleague Madhurika Patkar in six sets. Kumaresan defeated Patkar by 5-11, 11-5, 11-7, 5-11, 11-7 and 11-3.While Madhurika  bagged silver, Ankita Das settled for bronze in the individual table tennis event at Lusofonia Games.

In mens singles,  In a repeat of their clash in the quarterfinal of the National Championship earlier this month, Harmeet Desai got the better of Indian no.2 Soumyajit Ghosh. Harmeet Desai beat Soumyajit Ghosh 11-8, 11-2, 11-7, 11-8 with India finishing with a rich haul of six golds out of seven on offer, their best performance in the Lusofonia Games. In the bronze medal match, Portugal's Andre Silva beat his team-mate Diago Silva 11-7, 11-6, 11-7, 12-10 to clinch bronze.

India had to face dissapointment in the mens doubles section where none of the two pairs of India could reach to finals and therefore had to settle for bronze. The bronze came through the pair of Soumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet Desai.

The Indian women, who made a clean sweep in the team and singles event, went on to win the doubles finals when K.Shamini and Madhurika Patkar beat Portugal's Marta Santos and Joana Mota 11-5, 11-6, 11-6. ,

In the mixed double finals, Soumyajit Ghosh and Ankita Das won gold, beating Portugal's Diogo Silva and Joana Mota 11-8, 11-6, and 11-9.

Soumyajit and Ankita beat India's Harmeet Desai and Shamini Kumarasena in the semi-finals
Harmeet Desai and Kumarasena Shimini won bronze in the mixed doubles when they beat Portugal's Andre Silva and Micial Patricia 11-6, 11-6, 11-10.

Thus Team Goa (India) reigned supreme to finish with rich haul of 92 medals (37 Gold, 27 Silver and 28 Bronze) to finish first among the 12 countries that took part in the mega event.

While Portugal finished second with 50 medals (18 Gold, 20 Silver and 12 Bronze).

Macau finished third with 38 medals (15 Gold, 9 Silver and 14 Bronze).

Goa (India) emerge over all champions at the third edition of the 2014 Lusofonia Games in Goa.’