Akalanka Peiris bagged his first Silver medal and second medal overall at this years’ Neo Garden Singapore National Swimming Championship 2019, with a blistering lap in the 50m Backstroke final.
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Sri Lanka fielded 15 swimmers for the 2019 Singapore National Swimming Championship which kicked off on the, 19th June and managed 3 medals on the opening day. On the second day of the event, Peiris was up on his pet event, the 50m backstroke.
In his preliminaries, Akalanka qualified with a time of 26.99 seconds behind Malaysia’s Jian Han Tern who finished at 26.00 seconds. The final was a heated affair, Peiris and Tern besting each other with every stroke. But Akalanka’s timing of 26.68seconds just didn’t cut it for Gold and Tern pulled a 26.30 seconder to finish first.
Today, 21st June, Kaveen Weerasinghe, Akeleshwar Premanadan and Ramudi Samarakoon will be partaking in the Men’s and Women’s 400m Freestyle event respectively. Cherantha De Silva, Sandev Senarathna, Shenon Weerasinghe, Dhinal Weerasinghe and Revan Senaratne will swim their preliminaries in the Men’s 100m Butterfly event.
Ramudi Samarakoon is in the Women’s 50m Breaststroke start list while Kavindra Nugawela will swim in the Men’s 20mm Backstroke today. Sri Lanka’s only Gold Medal getter so far, Kimiko Raheem will go for her second medal as she is set to swim the Women’s 200m Backstroke later today, as well.
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Day 1 Results
Ganga Seneviratne competed in the Women’s 100m Backstroke event and won 3rd place in the B Final. She swam a 1:08.54min lap in the preliminaries and finished off with a timing of 1:07.58min in the final swim off.
In the same event, the 100m Back, Kimiko Raheem won Gold in the A Final with a final timing of 1:04.10min. Her qualification timing was clocked at 1:04.62. This first-place finish has won Raheem 740 FINA points which will be a major boon to her earning a spot in the FINA World Championship later this year.
Kimiko will also be recorded as Sri Lanka’s first female swimmer to score over 700 FINA points, which is both a personal and national achievement.
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Sri Lanka’s Akalanka Peiris swam the Men’s 100m Backstroke event and secured third place in the A Final. His preliminary timing was at 59.40sec and swam a 57.93sec lap in the finals to win Sri Lanka a Bronze.
Meanwhile, Kaveen Weerasinghe finished in 18th place in the Men’s 800m Freestyle event with a final timing of 9:13.60sec.
Keep it logged onto ThePapare.com for more results and daily reports from the ongoing Singapore National Swimming Championship 2019!
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