Source: Hueiyen News Service
Agartala, February 07 2009:
The 23rd NE games, held in Tripura over the past four days, ended this evening in the Dasharath Deb stadium and sports complex this evening after a colourful closing ceremony and fireworks.
The governor and Tripura finance minister Badal Chowdhury, chief guests in the games, called for a national sports policy to develop talents across northeast and thanked the participants.
This was followed by distribution of prizes and a colourful cultural programme that climaxed with display of fireworks.
As the match concluded today, host Tripura clinched overall champion's title with 145 medals in total.
Manipur team clinched second position with 98 medals in total.
Assam was in the third position with 74 medals.
As regards the day's results, Tripura's Jyotisankar Debnath and Manipur's A.Surabala Devi secured double golds by winning the 200 metre sprint in the mens and womens categories-earlier the duo had won the 100 metre also.
But the outstanding performance of local girl Sunita Jamatya dominated the show today also as she captured two more golds and a silver this morning to take her medal tally to a record 10 golds and 1 silver.
Inspired by a partisan crowd, Sunita created sensation in the Raima swimming pool in Dasharath Deb sports complex , winning golds at ease in womens 50 metre butter fly and 100 metre free style.
Assam's Arindam Gogoi and Rajiv Bora won golds in mens 50 metres butterfly and 50 metre back stroke.
The home team's gold rush in aquatic events was enriched also by Debajit Sil and Purnima Jamatya who won the mens 100 metre free style and womens 50 metre breast stroke.
The hosts also caused a mild stir by winning six golds in different categories of boxing events , held in the open Stable ground.
Manipur's L.Mahesh Singh also won a hard earned gold in mens 50 metre breast stroke .
The atheletic events which concluded today saw Manipur showing its superiority in middle distance running.
M.Samananda Singh and Ch Sonia Devi of Manipur captured facile golds in the 1500 metre run of men and women .
The silvers in both the events went to Tripura's Feroz Mia and Manipur's N.Sunanda Devi.
Manipur however suffered a setback , going down to hosts Tripura in tie-break through penalty strokes in the mens hockey final.
In the scheduled match, held in the morning on Tripura police ground, Tripura had shot into 2-0 lead through field goals scored by Kamal Putry and Barnabas Nag but the visitors came back strongly by equalising through O.Boniyam and Th Ramesh.
In the tie-break through direct strokes Tripura converted three but Manipur could manage only one and tamely went down to win the silver.
In the badminton team event favourite Assam expectedly won the gold , followed by Nagaland on silver and Tripura on bronze.
Assam put a seal on its supremacy in the table tennis events also by winning gold in all individual events .
Sanjana Sharma and Priya Dutta of Assam won the gold and silver in womens singles championship while Kaushik Phukon won the mens singles for gold .
The mens doubles gold also went to Kaushik Phukon and Partha Pratim Bora while the womens table tennis doubles gold was captured by Sanjana Sharma and Papri Bora.
In the soccer matches being held at Kailasahar in north Tripura district , hosts Tripura earned bronze in womens football by getting the better of a plucky Sikkim team 3-2 in the morning .
Tripura eves , Gulti Chowdhury , Mohini jamatya and Pudulu Debbarma, netted the goals.
In the mens section Tripura flattered to deceive , going down to Manipur in the final via tie-breaker 1-4 even though the match had ended 1-1 in the scheduled time.
Manipur duly secured the gold in the womens football final by routing Mizoram 3-0 .