Differing medal figures explained

By KEITH PUARIA
THE uncertainties surrounding the medal tallies at the 5th PNG Grassroots Games are simply the result of late communication of results from individual sports to the Results Centre.
In addition, tallies have not been matching due to provinces counting their medals without them being made official yet.
This was made known by Host Organising Committee Support Staff yesterday at the centre.
Officer assisting the results office Annie Iamo admitted that the results had not been matching because of the delay in the receipt of the final result sheet as soon as sports had awarded medals.
“This is the centre for these results but they are not getting here,” Iamo said.
“It is the responsibility of individual sports, but we are trying our very best to actually go out and get the results when we get queries about our medal tally.”
All blame had been passed to the HOC office for the “out-of-sorts” medal tally, however, Iamo’s admission has pushed the buck back to the individual sports officials and tournament directors.
This confusion is also a result of provinces counting their medals even before the results have reached the office and made official.
Such instances include the counting of the para-sport medals especially in the track and field events, where the winner of a particular race does not necessarily get the gold but is counted by team officials as one.
Para-sports Director Sophie Tuna explained last night that the winner of a para-athletic race does not necessarily make the athlete the winner, until after calculations are made according to his or her category.
The current tally at the centre was the official one as of last night, after the 6.30pm update, without the Athletics results.
The next update would have been 10.30pm last night as confirmed by Iamo.

All provinces meanwhile were asked to report to the centre to confirm their tallies with the official tally, which has been done according to the results received from the individual sports sporting director so far.