Inaugural Beach Games off to a flying start

Central zone bag highest gold medals on opening day.

KARACHI: The inaugural Sindh Olympic Association (SOA) Beach Games 2013 kicked off yesterday at the Sea View, Karachi with the city’s four zones participating in the inaugural event.

Central zone topped the table on the first day with six gold medals, while rest of the teams grabbed four gold medals each.

In the cycling event, Shahjahan of Central zone was placed first ahead of West’s Amir and South’s Rizwan.

Organisation ‘poor’

The Games started late with the opening ceremony being delayed by an hour, with participants complaining over the lack of arrangements for athletes to train on the beach before the event started.

“The event was fine except for some initial mismanagement,” one of the cyclists of South, Sajjad, told The Express Tribune. “We did not get a chance to practice on the beach beforehand. Maybe that’s the reason the race was shorter than what we are used to.”

The men’s beach marathon ended with East’s Shahbaz winning gold ahead of Central’s Akram and teammate Abrar.

Meanwhile in the women’s event, Sheza Altaf of Central zone won the race with West’s Marium finishes a close second and Sher clinching bronze.

Boxing saw close contests as Central, South and West grabbed four gold medals apiece and East ended first in three categories.

The women’s netball event saw Central beating East and South ousting West, while in throwball, South defeated East and Central outshone West. Both events will continue today to determine the winners.

In an unfortunate development, two participants were injured during a kickboxing demonstration in which they had to break burning tiles.

However, SOA Secretary General Mudassar Arain deemed the event a success.

“Considering these were the first Games of their kind in Pakistan, I would say they went off very well,” said Arain. “The athletes performed well even though it was the first time most of them played on this terrain. We are especially pleased with the demonstrations of gymnastics, ice-breaking and taekwondo. The participants put a lot of effort into it.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2013.