India opened their account at the XIX Commonwealth Games after women weightlifters Soniya Chanu and Sandhya Devi won their country’s first medals at the mega-event, here at the Jawaharlal Nehru Sports Complex on Monday.
While Sonia Chanu won the silver medal, Sandhya Devi bagged the bronze in the 48kg category, thus, winning the first medals for India. The gold medal was won by Nigerian weightlifter, Augustina Nkem Nwaokolo as she broke the Commonwealth Games record for the snatch in the Women’s 48 kg category.
Though the performance by the Indian weightlifting team was far excellence, coach Harnam Singh particularly did not seem to be very happy with the results.
Harnam Singh said that had luck been with India, the weightlifters would have surely bagged the gold.
“I am not happy. We had expected the gold medal. Neither the federation, nor the players are satisfied. We had promised that we would get the first gold medal for the country, but unfortunately we could not,” said the coach.
When asked for the reason behind India not being able to win the first spot, Harnam Singh cited technical issues as a problem. “There were some technical issues which led to us losing the gold. Our players are technically strong, but it was just our bad luck that we didn’t win the gold,” he added.
Silver medalist Soniya Chanu too expressed similar thoughts. “I am happy, but am not completely satisfied. It is unfortunate that I could not win the gold,” she said.
“I couldn’t perform my best. The federation had a lot of expectations from me to get the gold, but I could not. I was, however, under no any pressure by anyone. It is just that I am not satisfied with the silver, I wanted the gold,” she added.
Meanwhile, Sandhya Devi seemed happy with her performance. “I am satisfied with my results. I am happy with the bronze medal. I trained for 6-7 month to reach to this level and I am really happy,” she said.
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