Abhinav Bindra and compatriot Gagan Narang
The country’s competitors came out with flying colours and helped India finish a historic second in the final pecking order with more than 100 medals as the Commonwealth Games, which had a troubled build-up but proceeded smoothly thereafter, came to a close on Thursday.
A record medal haul of 38 gold, 27 silver and 36 bronze medals, the best-ever harvest for the country in the Games history, helped India climb to the record-high second position and end the multi-discipline event on a thumping note.
The main haul of these 101 medals came from the shooting range, wrestling mat, boxing ring, archery range and, to everyone’s surprise, the track and field events, to provide the country with a reasonably strong sports foundation on which to build a more powerful edifice on.
The country had several highs and a number of sports heroes and heroines in the 12-day sports festival that commenced with a spectacular opening ceremony on October 3.
There was the rifle-shooting ace Gagan Narang, the Hyderabadi, who scooped up four gold medals but could not achieve the feat of overhauling five-gold hero of the 2006 Melbourne Games - “Goldfinger” Samresh Jung.
There was the teenage woman archer Deepika Kumari, daughter of an auto-rickshaw driver, who held her nerves even as the more seasoned Dola Banerjee wilted, to come up with a golden double in the women’s recurve event.
The track and field events witnessed India’s first gold medal in 52 years when Krishna Poonia led a clean sweep of the women’s discus throw, Harwant Kaur and Seema Antil winning the silver and bronze.
Later the women’s 4x400m relay squad also struck an unexpected gold with a superb display that pushed Nigeria and England to second and third places. Just when the titles seemed to be drying up at the end, the women shuttlers, led by this year’s Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awardee Saina Nehwal, brought down two gold medals to bring down the curtains on the country’s competitive show with a bang.
Those two gold medals in badminton were vital to help India push England to the third place by the skin of their teeth, India’s gold tally becoming 38 on the last day after they trailed their rivals going into the final day today.
The men’s hockey team, whose fortunes are followed closely by the sports fans of the country, made history by making it to the final for the first time before coming a cropper against world and defending champions Australia in today’s summit clash.
The 8-0 defeat was huge and one of the biggest suffered by the country, but the positives were the stirring displays put up against Pakistan and England, against whom the squad fought back from 1-3 down to win the semi final via the penalty shoot-out.
On the organisational front, after the shambolic build-up that included a dirty athletes village and other shortcomings leading to threats of pull-out by leading competing nations, the Commonwealth Games was on Thursday given a pat on the back by CGF chief Michael Fennell in his concluding media conference. “Delhi has performed and the overall image of the Games has been extremely positive”, declared Commonwealth Games Federation chief Fennell on the last day of the multi-discipline event.
“Leading up to the Games, people were not sure whether to go to India or not after all those reports (about the less than perfect build-up) came out. When I was going to India on September 23, I was even asked when would I announce the cancellation of the Games,” Fennell told a press conference.
“I said our job is to fix the problems and not to give up. I had said in a press conference at that time (before the Games) when asked whether there was Plan B and I said Plan B is Delhi. It was always Delhi and Delhi has performed,” Fennell said.
But there were a lot of shortcomings - especially relating to sale of tickets, transport of athletes, officials and media and the Games info system that crashed totally and showed signs of getting back on track
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