Four swimmers obtained qualify timings to book their tickets to the Youth Olympic Games to be held in Nanjing 2014 at the 4th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships concluded at the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Sports Complex in Dubai recently.
Matthew Abeysinghe swam to a new national record of 1:52.76 seconds in the 200m Freestyle to obtain an “A” qualifying time to secure his berth with two other “B” times in the 50m Freestyle and 100m Butterfly. The others to achieve “B” qualifying times were Machiko Raheem (50m Freestyle – 27.61 secs), Kimiko Raheem (50m Backstroke – 30.70 secs) and the newest contender Cherantha De Silva (50m Butterfly – 25.83 secs).
FINA’s “A” qualifying standard is the faster standard and is given preference over the ”B” qualifying standard when swimming’s governing body FINA and the Nanjing Organizing sit to decide the 140 boys and 140 girls who will compete at Nanjing at the end of the global qualifying period on 08th June 2014. “This means that our swimmers have to continuously attempt at improving their times until the end of the qualifying period. Our target is to make them give their best shot at the Malaysian Open and Singapore Open, which are the major qualifying meets in the region to be held in April and May next year close to the end of the qualifying period”, said Akhry Ameer – General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union.
Other notable performances came from the Raheem sisters who continued to better their own national records. Machiko bettered her 400m Freestyle record, while Kimiko improved her national records in the 100m Backstroke, 50m Butterfly, 200m Backstroke, and the 50m Backstroke events.
A novel event that looks set to be confirmed to swimming’s Olympic programme is the mixed relays that were also conducted at Dubai. The mixed relays comprise two males and two females in each team to swim any order based on their strokes. Team Sri Lanka performed creditably in the 400m Mixed Freestyle Relay to be placed 11th out of 23 teams even though the contingent’s primary focus were the individual events.
Other swimmers who participated were Shehan De Silva, Ridmi Rankothge and Sithari Perera who also achieved personal best times in some of their events. A total of three boys and four girls represented Sri Lanka at the 4th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships concluded on Saturday 31st August in Dubai. Mr Manoj Abeysinghe and Mr Nishantha Kumarapperuma accompanied the contingent as coaches.
