Jayakody qualifies for Repechage Stage at Tokyo Para Games

On Aug 27, 2021

Sri Lanka’s Mahesh Jayakody qualified to compete in the Repechage Stage after he finished sixth in the Men’s Rowing Singles Sculls second heat of the 16th Tokyo Paralympics at the Sea Forest Waterway in Japan yesterday.

Jayakody, who was the first Sri Lankan to compete at the Para Games, finished with a time of 12.16.80s and secured his place in today’s Repechage event. However, Jayakody could not even get close to his personal best time of 11.04.23s in the heat, which was won by Roman Polianskyi of Ukraine with a time of 9.56.47s.

Despite finishing sixth in the heats, Jayakody still has a chance of competing in the final round if he could put up an improved performance in today’s Repechage event. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s Sampath Bandara had to be content with 23rd place out of 31 competitors in the Men’s Recurve Open Archery Ranking Round event held at the Yumenoshima Ranking Field yesterday.

He managed to collect a total of only 589. Rahim Gholamreza of Iran with 644 points is in front of this event having already gone past the record of 637. Bandara will next compete against India’s Vivek Chikera in the Men’s Individual Recurve Open 16/1 Elimination on September 3.

Sri Lanka’s Ranjan Dharmasena also lost his first round match of the wheelchair tennis tournament to Alexender Cataldo of Chile 6-3, 6-4. The first set lasted for 28 minutes but the second set turned out to be more competitive before Cataldo sealed the contest in 37 minutes.