GUWAHATI, Oct 26 � The performance of the Indian athletes in the recently concluded Commonwealth Games (CWG) was quite satisfactory and performing according to their plan they won 38 gold medals, said Bhubaneswar Kalita the Chef-de-Mission of the Indian team.
Interacting with a group of mediapersons in a press meet here today, Kalita said before the start of the CWG he announced that India will be the second team in the championship and it finished accordingly. This time India won a record number of 101 medals in the CWG. In the last Games at Melbourne, India had been able to get 52 medals and secured the fourth position.
Kalita revealed that they had meeting with the federations of 17 events which were included in this edition of CWG long before and planned to win maximum number of gold medals so that they can score more points. They knew that India can�t beat England, New Zealand or Canada in number of events, but if they win more gold medals then they can topple other countries in the table and finally their plan worked.
Kalita said the government spent around Rs 600 crore for preparing the teams and for last the two years camps were conducted in different places. The athletes also worked hard and it finally paid dividends. Asked about his most memorable moment during the Games, Kalita said when ace shuttler Saina Nehwal rallied to beat her England counterpart in the women�s badminton singles final on the last day, they were all thrilled and that was the most memorable moment for him during the Games. He said they had regular meetings with the players and before the finals all the players were given special treatment so that they can strike gold the next day.
Kalita asserted that they had confidence on the players in shooting, archery, tennis, table tennis, boxing, wrestling and weightlifting and athletes of those events did not let them down. However, men archers could not perform as per expectations, he said.
He was upset when shooter Gagan Narang was not chosen as the best athlete of the meet despite winning four gold medals. On Assam�s athlete, Kalita said Assam had participants in archery, lawn bowling and swimming. But he would have been happy had there more Assamese athletes in the Indian squads. But he was happy with the performances of the NE sportspersons.
