Countdown to Commonwealth games

In exactly a day, Australia’s Gold Coast will play host and convene with the opening ceremony of 2018 Commonwealth Games.

More than 6,600 athletes and officials from 70 Commonwealth nations and territories will take part in 11 days of competition from 4th to 15th of April 2018.

Team PNG, consisting of 56 athletes and 32 officials, including the General Management Team, has arrived in Gold Coast and are gearing up for the event.

They will participate in 10 of the 23 sports offered during the Games.

The 10 sports are; Athletics (para-athletics), boxing, lawn bowls, rugby 7s, shooting, squash, swimming, table tennis (para-table tennis), triathlon and weightlifting.

The team will feature gold medallists from the last Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014: Weightlifters Steven Kari and Dika Toua along with Olympic number six, Morea Baru.

Weightlifting and rugby 7s were the two sports that qualified through a Games qualification process.

The men’s rugby 7s team did this through their fourth-place finish at the 2017 Oceania Championships.

Para-athletes competing at the Games also had to go through a qualification process.

The country wishes Team PNG the best of luck during the games at Carrara Stadium.

(Picture: Breakers North)

Author: 
Annette Kora