Wildcards and gymnast make early exit

Sri Lanka’s wildcards and the gymnast failed to make an impression and made early exits as China, Japan and the US shared the top three positions of the points table at the end of the day three of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Sunday. 

According to official results of artistic gymnastics published in the Tokyo Olympic website Gehani was ranked 78th out of 80 gymnasts who competed in all four disciplines – vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercises.  

Gehani was competing in gymnastics- which is not even a fixture in the South Asian Games- after training in Japan through an International Olympic Committee scholarship. She was competing against a strong field that was inclusive of US sensation Simone Biles. Biles aggregated 57.731 points while her teammate Sunisa Lee was in second place with 57.166 points. The 18 year-old Gehani had a total score of 45.798 points yesterday.    

Swimmer Gaffoor Aniqah and shooter Tehani Egodawela were also ranked among the lowest placed performers in their respective events. 

Gaffoor Aniqah was ranked 32nd out of 33 swimmers at the end of the first round of heats of the 100metres butterfly event at the Tokyo Aquatic Centre on Saturday. She 

clocked one minute and 05.33 seconds in her heat where only three swimmers competed. The event results laid bare the vast gulf of standard that exists between the world class athletes and the wildcards. Gaffoor’s timing was 9.51 seconds behind that of China’s Zhang Yufei, the fastest qualifier from the heats.  

Shooter Tehani Egodawela was ranked 49th out of 50 competitors at the 10m Air Rifle event as she aggregated 611.5 points. The gold medal winner China’s Yang Qian scored 628.7 points in the first round before collecting an Olympic record score of 251.8 in the final round. 

In badminton tenth seed Wang Tzu-Wei of Chinese Taipei beat Sri Lankan champion Niluka Karunaratne 2-0 (21-12, 21-15) in a 42 minutes encounter on Saturday. Niluka was ranked 99th in the world on June 15.  

By yesterday evening 35 countries had won medals with China leading the medals table with a total of 11 medals (six golds, one silver and four bronzes). Japan was in the second place with five golds. The US had four while Korea was in the fourth place with two golds. India with one silver is the only South Asian country in the medals table.