Sri Lankan Youth Para athletes create history-by Dhammika Ratnaweera
Sri Lankan Youth Para athletes created history at the Asian Youth Para Games in Bahrain when they clinched best-ever overall medal haul with an outstanding performance. Sri Lanka bagged 12 medals (four Gold, four Silver, four Bronze) at this meet which ended yesterday.
The 16 year old Galina Basnayake finished the meet with another gold in 50m free style yesterday and that was her third gold. Earlier she got 400m free style and 100m free style golds. The swimmer from Lyceum International school, Wattala had an outstanding performance to pocket three golds and one silver from 100m butterfly.
The fourth gold for Sri Lanka was won by Mohammad Safran who is from Arakkala Muslim School Kekunagolla. Safran who got 100m silver once again was able to win the gold in the long jump with a leap of 5.60m. He had a clear lead to pocket his gold while Indian Darsh Ashish with 4.67m and Thailand P. Seangart with 3.90m were placed second and third .
Jason Jayawardene from Gateway International secured his first Silver medal in the Men’s T/F 40 Shot Putt with a distance of 6.64 metres while he claimed his second silver Medal in F 40 – Discus Throw with a distance of 13.84 metres.
 |
| Mohammad Safran long jump gold medal and 100 m silver |
Janani Wickramasinghe from Suradhutha BMV Kuliyapitiya came to the limelight in women’s athletics. She secured three Bronze medals in this year’s competition. She clinched her first Bronze in the Girls T47 200m with a time of 29.36 seconds. She won her second Bronze in the T47 – 100M with a time of 13.88m and third in T47 – Long Jump with a distance of 4.38 metres.
Earlier Naveed Raheem, the captain of the Sri Lankan contingent, won Bronze in the S6-10 Men’s 400m Freestyle.
National Paralympic Committee (NPC) President Lt Colonal Deepal Herath said this is a huge achievement from Sri Lankan youth and previous highest medal tally was five in 2013 Asian Youth Para Games. The youth athletes were from Colombo as well as outstations and they were inspired by two Paralympic athletes gold medalist Dinesh Priyantha Herath and bronze medalist Samitha Dulan and they made maximum effort to prove their skills.
Sri Lankan team scheduled to return home tomorrow (8) and NPC and Sports Ministry will make arrangements to give a warm welcome for the medal winners at the Airport.
