Ansar and VDP dominate as Games run without incident

Curtains will be drawn on the Bangabandhu 9th Bangladesh Games today at the Bangabandhu National Stadium, with all 378 gold medals, barring men's cricket, already being decided at the close of the penultimate day of the 10-day meet in eight different cities across the country.

The cricket final will be held today in Barishal.

One big source of relief and satisfaction for the Bangladesh Olympic Association (BOA) is that no athlete was infected by Covid-19 over the past nine days although there was a grave threat which led the government to declare a lockdown in the middle of the Games, which are being held for the first time since 2013.

"We brought approximately 1,800 athletes under Covid-19 testing in the last nine days but no one tested positive and it has been a big relief for us that the Games are going to end in a healthy environment," Games steering committee chairman and BOA vice president Sheikh Bashir Ahmed told The Daily Star yesterday.

"However, we found a few cases where athletes have either caught a cold or had high temperature but they were kept in isolation and participated in their respective events after getting Covid-19 negative certificates," Ahmed said, adding that they had ensured the closing ceremony would not need any participation from athletes and instead comprise solely of an audio-visual display of the highlights from the 31 disciplines, concluding speeches from the guests and a laser show.

"There had been anxiety following the increasing number of Covid-19 cases, but the athletes truly performed better this time around. They also followed health guidelines to make it a success. The medal-giving ceremonies were also really well arranged," Ahmed praised.

Bangladesh Ansar and VDP dominated the top of the table, grabbing more than 120 gold medals, followed by Bangladesh Army, who bagged more than 100 golds. Bangladesh Navy were third with more than 60 gold medals so far. The BOA had not completed the final tally when this report was filed.

Ansar participated in 30 out of 31 disciplines of Bangladesh Games while Bangladesh Army participated in 24 disciplines and Bangladesh Navy took part in only 12.

Of 388 districts and divisional sports associations, clubs, universities, educational boards and services teams, 138 organisations won at least a bronze while 25 organisations shared 378 gold medals.