Augustina Sunday and Zainab Momoh of Team FCT defeated Juliana Jacob and Peace Orji of Taraba 2-1, to claim gold in the Women's Badminton event at the ongoing 18th National Sports Festival.

The two teams slugged it out at the Mobolaji Johnson Sports Complex, Lagos.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the keenly contested encounter dragged on for one hour and 30 minutes before the FCT duo eventually subdued the hard-fighting pair from Taraba.

In his reaction, Coach Mohammed Bako of Team FCT told NAN that the victory was not so satisfactory.

"It's okay, but I expected more than this, at least, two gold medals and we ended up with one gold and two silver medals in the sport.

"But it is still better than the only silver medal we won in the women doubles at the 2011 sports festival in Port Harcourt," Bako said.

He complained of the poor performance of his boys in the men's category, but was highly optimistic about their chances of doing well in future competitions.

"My boys did their best, though they did not win any medal; but they will surely do well in subsequent festivals," Bako said.

Meanwhile, George Haruna, coach of Team Taraba, told NAN that winning a silver medal was far better than not winning anything at all.

NAN