Raminai salutes Team PNG

Vice-Minister for Sports Wesley Raminai has congratulated Team PNG for its performance at the 10th Pacific Mini Games in Vanuatu after finishing second behind New Caledonia with a total of 85 medals.
New Caledonia finished first with 47 gold, 15 silver and 18 bronze for a total of 80 medals. The position of the winner of a Games is decided by gold medals rather than the total number of medals.
PNG won 33 gold medals, 30 silver and 22 bronze — 85 in total. Fiji finished third, hosts Vanuatu fourth with their best performance to date.
Raminai said it was a great experience watching how the athletes and officials rallied to keep PNG steady on the medal tally throughout the two-week competition and to finish with a performance such as that was a great team effort and “let us not forget we fielded 10 sports from the 14 on the programme”.
Raminai was in Port Vila for the closing stages of PNG’s surge on the medal tally with one of the highlights being last Friday when Moha Mea and Richard Kilarupa’s fought back while trying to snatch the gold medal from Samoa in beach volleyball.
The closing ceremony of the Games was held on Friday night.
Raminai also witnessed Dika Toua and Morea Baru’s gold medal performances.
PNG competed in netball, boxing, tennis, beach volleyball, basketball, weightlifting, table tennis, karate, athletics and golf but did not field teams in archery, judo, rugby sevens, and soccer.
While in Port Vila, Raminai used the opportunity to have meetings with the PNG Olympic Committee president Sir John Dawanincura, who is also the president of PNG Weightlifting Federation, Athletics PNG president Tony Green and Team PNG chef de mission Emma Waiwai.
“Obviously detailed analysis, reports compiled and other necessary requirements following the Games have yet to be done but personally I thought Team PNG performed quite well,” Raminai said.
“We won the Pacific Games in 2015 at home but carrying the performance to a Games away from home becomes a more challenging scenario.” Athletics won 17 gold medals to be the best at the games with weightlifting also performing quite strongly so Raminai encouraged them to maintain the programmes that were obviously working for them.
“We have never won the full Pacific Games away from home so all stakeholders must work together sharing ideas, and working harder to give ourselves the best possible chance to create history in Samoa,” Raminai said.
“If we set such high objectives and drive hard at achieving them, we will continue to be a dominant force in sports in the Pacific. After all we are the biggest country with the biggest population compared to smaller neighboring countries so we must put in place quality programmes.