Ivana Furtado bags Geno award.

Cricketer Saurabh Bandekar and chess prodigy Ivana Furtado have been selected as best sportsman and sportswoman respectively by Sports Journalists Association of Goa (SJAG) for the Geno Award 2005-06 to be presented on September 7. Ivana is perhaps the youngest Goan to have been singled out for the prestigious award and that too in the field of chess wherein Goans are still finding their bearings!

Seven year old Ivana who won the bronze medal at the Asian Youth Festival in New Delhi in December 2005 and followed it up with a silver medal at the same competition in Teheran, Iran this year. She still has one more year in the Under 8 category, where she can be expected to bag the gold medal next year to equal the performance of her Goan teammate Bhakti Kulkarni who won the gold medal in the Girls Under 14 section.

Both Ivana and Bhakti will be participating in the World Youth in Georgia in October and Ivana will play in the National Under 7 to be held in Panjim from November 15th to the 20th at the Don Bosco School complex.

The girls have received tremendous support from the Goans both at home and abroad. The Sports Authority of Goa and the Goa State Government have also been consistently encouraging them throughout to accomplish these stupendous feats.