Gold medal upsets

By KEITH PUARIA
IT was a day of unexpected results as favourites fell in gold medal playoffs.
Team New Ireland’s women’s softballers delivered what their men could not bring home against the hosts on Tuesday, and left the packed softball diamonds at the Kokopo Sports Grounds silent at the end of the seventh inning, while Central came out of a strong attacking challenge from Morobe, the 2014 Games hosts, to win by 37 runs.
Both bat-and-ball codes ended the day with tightly fought gold medals, and while league nines will have its finals today, only combat sports – taekwondo and kickboxing – are the other sports gunning for the medals today.
ENB are favourites for the rugby league 9s finals at the Kalabond with stiff competition set to come from Morobe and the highlands provinces with the medal-less Southern Highlands and Western Highlands both highly fancied contenders, besides Central and NCD.
At the Kokopo Secondary School Hall, taekwondo finals start this morning after the final qualifiers dominated yesterday’s rounds, while kickboxing were still into their knockout stage as of 10pm last night.

Simbu distance specialist Skene Kiage added to his provinces gold with his own in the 3,000m final and main event yesterday among qualifying finals, but the medals tumbled at the para-athletics.
Goilala runner Adrian Aopi entered the national athletics stage with an unexpected win over internationals Stanley Luana and Elias Larry in the men’s Ambulant 400m for the gold, another new star on the rise Sandra Pora edged Joyleen Jeffery also for the gold in the womens 100m ambulant as well as the 400m.
A total of 18 medals have now been given out of the 26 medals on offer in Para-sports with eight medals up for the taking in the finals for the 100m deaf for both men and women, 200m ambulant, 100m ambulant for the men only, the men’s javelin ambulant, and the men’s 1,500 ambulant.
Forty minutes down to Rabaul Team Western doubled up in the women’s singles darts with a gold and silver to bring the darts event to an end, and signal the last of sports outside of Kokopo.