India come up with biggest haul at Military World Games

India came up with its biggest ever medal haul at the Military World Games, finishing with two gold, one silver and seven bronze medals in the fourth edition of the event which ended in Hyderabad on Sunday.

However, a large majority of the 196 Indian athletes in 14 events did not get close to the top three places and the men accounted for all the medals in the seven-day event.

It is noteworthy that India was able to make a mark with a haul of 10 medals in only their second time of entering the Games.

In the last edition in Catania (Italy), India had grabbed a lone bronze medal through boxer Kehanand Beliwal.

As has been the history in the games, Russia (38 gold, 26 silver and 27 bronze), China (35-21-11) and Germany (5-10-13) proved to be supreme finishing as top three medal winners in the Games while India finished at 19th spot amongst the 48 countries of the 103 getting into the medal bracket. The Games move to Brazil in 2011.

This time too, Indian boxers were the most impressive as they accounted for a gold and four bronze medals.

India's first gold medal was won by the sailors in the event held in Mumbai through R Mahesh and Giridhar Yadav in the Military Class race.

Jitender Singh got the first Games medal for India in the 400m hurdles event and Manipuri boxer P Narjit Singh completed the tally with a superb golden effort in the bantamweight category.

Shooters Vijay Kumar, C K Choudhary, Pemba Tamana and Hambir Singh, all from the Army Marksmanship Unit in Mhow, claimed the silver medal in the 25m Centre Fire Pistol Team category and Chatholi Hamza won a 1500m bronze dashing the hopes of current Asian champion Mohammud Othman Shaween of Saudi Arabia.

Strains and tension of competing against higher ranked athletes did not deter Jitender as he survived a tight race to finish third ahead of Konstantinos Anastasiou of Greece, who was breathing down his neck.

Jitender's last ditch effort helped him win the bronze behind top notch runners Edress Hawsawi of Saudi Arabia and Jesus Salas of Brazil.

As for Hamza, it was definitely a superb effort since he raced against well known Kenyans and Shaween. The Indian was bunched with Gideon Gathimba, Shadrack Korir, bronze medallist in the recent Osaka World Championships, and Shaween.

But steadily, Hamza closed the gap with Shaween before winning the medal.

Medals in shooting were expected and Indian marksmen came for all-round praise as they competed against the world class shooters from China and Russia besides other countries, who rule supreme in Olympics and World Championships.

Vijay Kumar was the cynosure of all eyes after he almost set a new world mark, failing by just one shot (591). His effort of 590 in the team event of the 25m Centre Fire Pistol was on line for a podium finish in the individual event too.

However, Vijay was ousted in the four-day bronze medal tie-shoot.

In the team event, India was pushed to the wire and Choudhary had to take the full load to assure a medal as he achieved the target of 577 for it.

The shooters were also at a disadvantage, though shooting is one sport which can be associated with the Armed forces, as many events here are not part of the Olympic retinue.

Moreover, the shooters have been working hard to get quota berths for the Beijing Olympics next year and were relieved from the national coaching camp for the Games.

However, a much better performance was expected from Vijay Kumar and Pemba Tamang as they have done well in the Melbourne Commonwealth Games last year grabbing individual medals for the country.

On the other hand, the performance of the Indian women competitors could not be attributed to this reason as they finished way down the ranks in all their events.

The boxers acquitted themselves well as Narjit won the gold medal in the bantam category and he looked to be the most skillful and intelligent Indian pugilist since his mixture of combining defence and offence stood him in good stead.

He steadily earned points and came up with telling blows to gain seven points and yielding just two to his rival, Marcel Schneider of Germany.

Others to bring home bronze medals were, H K Beliwal (Lt Fly), Satya Raju (Lt Welter), D Bhagyarajan (Welter) and Mohinder Thapa (Lt heavy).

It is not fair to expect our swimmers to win medals against strong contenders, China, Russia, Germany and Italy.

The best performance in the pool came from P M Samota (200m backstroke), who swam in a final but finished last.

It was pathetic that Arjun Muralidharan, T A Sujith and Sunil Kumar were not able to cross the hurdle in their first heats in their respective events.

The grapplers also failed to impress and with the competition being stiff, Chanderpal failed to make the final of the freestyle (120kg) bout after being eliminated in the semi-final by Recep Kara of Turkey.