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The Alpine Skiing contingent led by Megha ensured that the final day of competition in the Special Olympics World Winter games ended well for India, as the 14-year old from Himachal won her third gold medal of the games, this time in the Novice Slalom run.

Megha was always the favourite to win the event after racking up easy wins in the Giant Slalom and the Super Giant Slalom a few days ago. The youngster set a breathtaking pace, completing the course in 49.12 seconds in her first run, and though she slacked off in her second run, taking over a minute to complete it, Megha just about managed to finish a second ahead of Lea Kranjc who put in a combined time of 1 minute and 50 seconds to win her third straight silver of the competition. With only three competitors in division F01, Rebecca McGonagle took the bronze, 20 seconds behind the leading duo.

Megha's teammate Jewan Mishra won his first medal of the games in the men's 4th division claiming the silver behind Jasmin Nurkovic of Montenegro. Georgi Krapuzov of Bulgaria won the Bronze.

Other Indians competing in Alpine Skiing - Reena and Shaivender Singh both came in 5th place in their respective divisions.

The Indian Men's Floor Hockey team turned in an exceptional performance over the week to win Gold in division 10. After losing their initial few matches including a 13-0 drubbing at the hands of Uruguay, India were reclassified in a more relevant division and notched up impressive wins over Cyprus, Argentina, Monaco and Korea.

The Women's Hockey team were placed in a two member division with Honduras and ended up picking up the silver after losing all three of their round-robin matches.

In the end a fairly successful games for the Indian athletes, though the disqualification of two athletes from the competition on 12th Feb did take a large part of the sheen off what was a very special sporting event.

Video Copyright: Special Olympics 

Photograph Copyright: Ted Zimmerman

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