Sri Lankans At The Olympics

Sri Lanka has a contingent of I think six or seven at the Olympics, but I haven’t managed to catch any of them. Young swimmer Heshan Unamboowe is already out but we still have competitors is badminton, shooting and women’s swimming. If you Google ‘Sri Lanka Olympics‘ it’s actually quite helpful, but you have to click through a lot of sites to figure out when exactly the Sri Lankans are playing. So, to save you some time, I went through and figured out when all of our people are playing and made the Olympics an event on YAMU.

If you want a spoiler here it is:

Today: July 30th

Badminton: Niluka Karunaratne – 1:37 PM
Badminton: Thilini Jayasinghe – 6:12 PM
Shooting: Mangala Samarakoon – 1:30 PM

August 1

Swimming: Reshika Udugampola – 2:30 PM

August 3

Shooting: Mangala Samarakoon – 1:30 PM

There’s more details and some images on YAMU.

Posted on Monday, July 30th, 2012 in sport, Sri Lanka.

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6 Comments »

Rain

2012-07-30 13:37:47

Given time, is it on SL time? or London??

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indi

2012-07-30 17:46:29

SL time

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Giules

2012-07-30 14:19:29

I had been trying for months to get NOC to do promote our local athletes more than they already have been. From what I can see, they have little to no funding to spend on stuff like that, which is a shame when there’s going to be a Rugby stadium built behind the Rajagiriya HSBC on a whim from MR’s son.

It’s so bad that even many working at the NOC (when I went to meet them) did not know who had qualified and who didn’t.

I offered to do a complimentary shoot of the local athletes to try and generate some interest and support locally, but NOC took forever to get back to me. Finally, about 2 days notice they asked if I could take some pictures. Unfortunately at the time we only had 3 in the country, and 2 more announced later, though we managed to do a very hurried shoot: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.445128148854975.104211.123462721021521&type=1

I was sad to see Heshan go. Great guy, funny as well. I’m considering doing a shoot with all of them on their return – would love to see more support and funding for local athletes in the future.

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htp

2012-07-30 21:34:38

the hottie’s 400m hurdles is on Aug 2

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CHG

2012-07-30 23:28:22

Niluka beat the world no.8 ranked and moved into the final 16. Before the games he said he aimed to finish among the top 10. If he wins his next game he will be among the final 8, thereby achieving his target for this Olympics.

He was ranked 47th in the world to get qualified for Olympics. Only 30 odd gets qualified for Badminton in Olympics. He got the chance because among the top 35 in the world are several from the same country and there is a cap on the maximum number of participants from each country for the event. Now he will surely move up the world rankings after this win. I think we have an outside chance of a Badminton medal in the Rio Olympics in 2016 if Niluka stays overseas and keeps competing at international tournaments, which he only started to do from late 2011. Before coming to London he had a training stint in Poland and flew in from Warsaw.

Thilini Jayasinghe lost both games and crashed out of the competition. Mangala Samarakoon finished two before the last in the rifle shooting. Unamboowe finished with the 2nd slowest timing in the heats.

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tastyjujubes

2012-07-31 00:36:31

Sri Lanka’s Karunaratne ousts 8th-ranked Kenichi Tago in Olympic badminton group play

LONDON — A Sri Lankan who has been on a world tour of badminton’s backblocks for 10 months pulled off the first major upset in the London Olympics by eliminating eighth-ranked Kenichi Tago of Japan 21-18, 21-16 on Monday.

“This is the biggest win in the history of Sri Lanka badminton,” Niluka Karunaratne said with obvious pride.

http://tinyurl.com/d2s686z

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