A jubilant Sri Lanka men’s athletics team snatched all three medals in the 200M T42 event medals yesterday, in a rare moment, that saw three Sri Lankan flags raised simultaneously at the third Para Asian Games held in the Indonesian capital city Jakarta on Monday.
Sri Lanka currently has a total of five medals and is placed 10th in the medals tally out of 43 nations. China leads the tally with 10 gold, 5 silver, and 3 bronze followed by Japan and Uzbekistan respectively.Amila Prasanna of the Sri Lanka Army won the gold medal when he recorded 26.01 seconds in the 200m event while his fellow military men Upul Indika Chukadasa clocked 26.08 seconds to secure silver and Charith Nirmala Buddhika finished in 26.59 seconds to grab the bronze.
Sri Lankan team started their campaign on the third day the Army’s Amara Indumathi and Chaminda Sampath Hettiarachchi won silver medals each for the country.Indumathi won the T45-46, 47 long jump recording 4.62 meters just 0.09 meters shy of gold medalist Abdullaeva Kamolakho from Uzbeskistan. Iranian Bornaki Zahra won the bronze medal in the event after she jumped 4.51 meters, 0.1 meter better than 4th placed Sri Lankan Kumudu Priyankara.
Hettiarachchi won the silver in the javelin throw, recording a distance of 59.32 meters. Indian S. Sandeep won the gold medal in the event with 60.01 meters while Iranian Omidi Ali secured the bronze medal recording 58.97 meters. Sri Lanka’s Samitha Dulan was unfortunate to end the event fourth with 58.38 meters.
The 35-member Sri Lankan delegation will participate in athletics, swimming, power lifting, shooting, table tennis, tennis, archery, badminton, and blind chess.
Sri Lanka was placed 19th in the last games in Incheon Korea in 2014 with 14 medals including one gold.
