Ramudi Samarakoon the 21 year old swimmer from Killer Whale Aquatics (KWA) established a new national record in the 200m Breaststroke event at the National Swimming Championships last week at the Sugathadasa Indoor Swimming Pool.
She set the new record in a time of 2:41.66 with her previous timing being 2:43.48 seconds and that too was set just 11 days prior to the Singapore swimming championship.
Ramudi finished the event with a lead of over 15 seconds against the silver medalist. This goes to prove that she is currently Sri Lanka’s finest breaststroke woman swimmer.
Besides this showing, KWA swimmers excelled as a team with impressive statics at the Nationals.
They claimed both the men’s and women’s senior national titles. The senior women’s team gathered 221 points which was a massive lead over last year’s champions Visakha Vidyalaya who had accumulated 112 points.
The men’s team from KWA also excelled to accumulate 319 points to overwhelm the previous year’s champions Army who were able to account for only 194 points to become runners-up.
The boys’ team from St. Joseph’s College clinched the men’s junior championship with 182 points while Lyceum International School Gampaha emerged as the women’s junior championship with 165 points.
Anusara Abeygoonawardena became the national men’s individual champion having performed outstandingly to win five golds. He was closely followed by Gavin Karunanayake with three golds and Matthew Abeysinghe with two golds.
Hiruki de Silva from Gateway College the ace freestyle swimmer clinched five golds and 25 points to be adjudged as the national women’s senior individual champion.
The girls’ individual championship was won by Ginuki de Silva from Leeds International School and the men’s junior national champion was Sheraya Amarasekera from KWA.
AIM Haathim and Okitha Gunasekera finished as joint champions in the junior boys’ individual category.
Overall, it was an exceptional performance by the swimmers from KWA breaking records and reclaiming the national titles in both the senior and junior categories at Sri Lanka’s premier championship. (TBR)