Trophies for Ladies, Royal College and Sri Lanka Army

Sri Lanka army managed to take the championship trophies in both the men’s’ and women’s’ open categories while Ladies College and Royal College emerged champions of the under 18 girls’ and boys’ categories respectively at the 30th Sri Lanka National rowing championship. 

The final races for the day started with the women’s over 18 scull category with K.W.N.Madushani of the Air Force sprinting to the finish leaving more than a boat’s length between herself and G.H.N.S.Kumari of the Navy. This event was followed by the over 18 women’s Coxed race for A teams with Army, Navy, University of Moratuwa(UOM) and University of Colombo(UOC) participating .S.A.S.Madubhashini, M.P.K.J.Kumarasingha, G.G.T.U.Sumanathissa, W.A.U.Subashini and J.M.Hussain from Sri Lanka Navy finished first with a timing of 8.48 minutes and UOC, Army and UOM completed the race respectively. In the race between Army and Bishops College (BC) in the over 18 pair M.M.M.J.Watsala and L.W.V.S.Lashisha from the Army had a major lead over their competitors. The most interesting race in the women’s over 18 category was the double scull. Bandana Shah and E.A.S.Dilhani  from Kothalawala Defence University(KDU) had a close race with W.S.G.S.Kanchana and M.M.M.J.Watsala from the Army. KDU went on to win gold with a three second difference. 

In the school girls’ category Samaakhya Gajanayake from Visaka Vidhyala had a good race, finishing in 08.50 minutes. The under 18 scull category was dominated by rowers from LC; Ishara Abbey cruised to gold and Tarea Karunaratna won silver. Despite this BC managed to grab the gold beating LC in the doubles scull event. The race in the force category was between two teams from LC and two teams from BC. LC A came in at first place and LC B placed second leaving the third and fourth positions to the BC A and B teams.

The ladies open category was dominated by the forces except for the scull event, Samaakhya Gajanayake from CRC, BASW Chandrarathna from UOM and SHDN Sandamali from Navy were placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. Army – A, UOM – A and Air Force-A finished in that order. In the double scull race the sailors showed their talent in the water by finishing ahead of Army and Air force who finished second and third respectively.

TANN Somarathne from Army won the open scull finals while Chaturanga Karunarathne and Nilanka Prasad, the pair from the Army, added another gold to their collection. The open double scull and the coxless fours was won by the Navy team. Similar to the open category, the Army team won the gold for the scull and double scull while Navy’s gold count went up through the pair and fours.

Scullers from Royal College (RC), Ananda College(AC), S. Thomas’ College(STC) and AIS raced for the title of the school boy sculler. Saliya Gunasekara from STC took it home just ahead of Suhith Alexander from AC securing the gold for himself. In the under 18 scull Hashen Weerakkody from RC led the race by a boat length against Champaka Edirimanne from AIS. The pair race saw a nail biting finish between Thisala Naveenda and Thineth Jayasuriya from AC and Ujith Hennayake and Thakesha Jayaratne from AIS. The race was close right to the end and a minute difference at the end secured the gold for AC. The double scull event was a race for gold between RC-A and RC-B. Kaveen Rajapakse and Lasaru Kudaligama reached the finish line first with a boat length between them and the RC-B team. The fours race of the school boy category was another close race between RC-A and AC-A. Lasaru Kudaligama, Kaveen Rajapakse, Praveen Weerakkody, Thimesha Amarasena and Avishka Jayaweera sprinted till the very end, winning narrowly over the AC – A team.

Championships for each category