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| Sunday, 21 August 2005 |
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S. Thomas' and Ladies out to repeat success at Rowing Nationals by Leslie Fernando Interesting and competitive rowing will be the order of the day when defending champions S. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia and Ladies College together with ten other affiliated clubs will vie for major honours at the 22nd Rowing National Championships to be held from tomorrow (Monday August 22 to 27) on the Beira waters. The premier regatta is conducted by the Amateur Rowing Association of Sri Lanka (ARASL) and sponsored by Mobitel for the first time. Deva Henry, the President of ARASL at a press conference held at the Colombo Rowing Club pavilion on Wednesday night, thanked the sponsors Mobitel for supporting this event. The relationship with ARASL and Mobitel will flourish and hoped Mobitel will also get involved in the South Asian Games rowing to be held next year in Colombo. The rowing chief added that the sport has gained popularity in the recent past with the success Sri Lanka gained at the 9th SAF Games held in Pakistan which is considered to be the premier sporting extravaganza in the region. The national team's performance in Islamabad was satisfactory as five silver and two bronze medals were won. The ARASL will identify the rowers' performances and include them to the National Pool in preparation for the SA Games. This year, a record number of 332 oarsmen and oarswomen from 12 affiliated clubs have entered -Colombo Rowing Club, St. Joseph's College, S. Thomas' College, Royal, Ananda, Old Joes SC, Sri Lanka Air Force, Sri Lanka Navy, University of Colombo, University of Moratuwa, Ladies College and Museaus College will row in over one hundred and twenty races to be worked over a period of six days with the final being held on Saturday, August 27. The championships commence from 1.00 p.m. each day. Henry added that three lane rowing in certain categories will also be had for the first time at this year's nationals. The ARASL has added two new events to the championships in order to give exposure for young rowers to gear themselves to compete in future international regattas. The double scull event has been included for men's senior and in the under-16 junior category, the Pairs will be coxed. The events will be worked off in three categories, Junior under-16, Intermediate and Senior category. The events for junior under-16 and intermediate: fours, pairs and sculls and Ladies - fours, pairs and sculls, and for seniors-double sculls, fours, pairs and sculls. Senior men events would be over one mile while other events will be 1,000 metres. Henry also said that for the first time nationals will be rowed for 3 places-first place (10 points), second (8) and third (6) towards an overall tally in each category. Further in keeping up with international standards, competitors' boats will be weighed which would ensure that boats of the same weight would compete amongst each other. Coxwains for the championships will also be weighed with the minimum weight for men specified as 55 kgs and for ladies 45 kgs. However the under-16 category, coxswains minimum weight will be reduced by 10 kgs. The trophies on offer are: Jerry Silva Trophy for overall senior men's category, Eraj Wijesinghe Trophy for men's intermediate, Nalin Mendis Trophy for junior boys, J. M. Perera Trophy for senior ladies, Colombo Rowing Club Trophy for intermediate ladies, Flipper Trophy for junior girls, Nihal Silva Trophy for schoolgirl sculler and Schoolboy sculler Trophy for schoolboy sculler. Suren Amarasekera, the Chief Executive Officer of Mobitel said that the main reason for this sponsorship was the parallel between this sports characteristics of relentless focus on synchronising the team effort to achieve speed with that of Mobitel's focus on fine tuning its own elements of service quality and customer satisfaction to provide a consistently high service quality. Minoli Wijesinghe, Secretary ARASL, Chris Parakrama, Treasurer, Waruna de Silva, Vice President, Rohan Fernando, Committee Member and Nihal Silva, Co-ordinator were associated at the press briefing. Sripathi Sooriyarachchi, Deputy Minister of Sports will be the chief
guest on the final day of rowing. |
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