SL win beach kabaddi bronze medals

Chintana WASALA reporting from China

Sri Lankan men and women beach kabaddi teams added two bronze medals to their empty sack of medals, giving some relief to the medal hungry local beach athletes during the third Asian Beach Games in Fengxiang Beach, Haiyang, China last evening.

Sri Lankan men were defeated by the strong Iranians 50-23. Iran who defeated the defending Asian Beach Games Kabaddi champions 32-42 on Wednesday, are keeping their hope on the gold medal this time in Haiyang. The half time scored read 26-15 in favour of Iran who were too strong for Sri Lankans to make a comeback in the second half.

Sri Lanka women also lost their final game of the tournament, this time to India who had a formidable side which is eying for the gold. Sri Lankan women also played strongly to give their best against the mighty Indians who keep on promoting kabaddi around the world for quite some time.

This is the first occasion that Sri Lanka has won two medals for kabaddi at Asian Beach Games.

In the men’s final, Iran will meet Pakistan while India will play against Thailand with the hope of securing the gold medal this morning.

Chameera placed seventh

Sri Lankan champion Chameera Lakshan finished seventh in the final overall standings techno 293 wind surfing event last evening. He finished the 11th race of the event sixth last evening. Sri Lanka’s other competitor Priyantha Gunawardena was placed last but he did not contest in the last two stages of the event.

Chameera’s performance was far ahead of some of the competitors who have been involved in the event for a long period.

This was the first occasion that Sri Lankans competed on T293 surf boards which are named after its length (2.93m). Sri Lankans are used to compete on longer boards and they had only one day’s practice before the big event at the Haiyang Asian Beach Games.

“With the correct equipment for training, we are confident that we can reach greater heights,” Gunawardena said.