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Lankans seek gold in Lisbon |
| By Namal Pathirage reporting from Lisbon |
At the Fifteen former colonies of Portugal including Sri Lanka are meeting in Lisbon, Portugal at the Lusofonia Games, Lisbon 2009 from 12 to 19 July.
The track and field events of the championships will be held today and tomorrow and Sri Lanka will be seen in action in nine of them.
Young Shehan Ambepitiya who won a sprint ‘gold’ at the last Commonwealth Games held last year will lead the Lankan contingent. The other noteworthy factor in this contingent is that athlete Premila Priyadharshini who was slapped with a drug ban will be competing for the first time at these games after serving her sentence.
In the field events Sri Lanka will be in action in the Taekwondo, Table Tennis and Beach Volleyball events. Four different teams will represent Sri Lanka in the Beach Volleyball events. The Table Tennis events will be held on 12-13 July, Taekwondo events on the 16 and the 27 while the Beach Volley Ball from the 16th to the 19th.
Sri Lanka’s Olympic chief Hemasiri Fernando speaking to the Sunday times said that even though these games contained a varied number of sports, Sri Lanka have billed themselves in only some events that they are confident in doing well.
In the first Lusofonia games held in 2007 Sri Lanka bagged three gold medals, and legendary Susanthika was directly responsible and assisted the relay team to bag the third. |
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