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by Lal Gunasekera in Manchester

Manchester, Thursday ,Sri Lanka's hopes of winning at least one medal in athletics at the 17th Commonwealth Games were shattered when the quartets failed miserably in both finals of the women's 4 x 100 metres and men's 4 x 400 metres relays here last night.

In the women's 4 x 100 metres relay final, Sri Lanka finished in sixth place with a time of 44.25 seconds. The four runners were Pradeepa Herath, Sriyani Kulawansa, Damayanthi Darsha and Susanthika Jayasinghe.

The gold was won by Bahamas, silver by Nigeria and bronze by England. Bahamas timed 42.44 seconds.

For Bahamas Debbie Ferguson it was a memorable game. She won both the women's 100 and 200 metres finals, and ran the anchor lap in the 4 x 100 metres final for her third gold in Manchester.

Then in the men's 4 x 400 metres relay, Sri Lanka found themselves disqualified after finishing sixth.

A change was made among the quartet with Prasanna Amarasekera running the first lap, Ranga Wimalawansa the second, Rohan Pradeep Kumara the third and Sugath Tillekeratne the fourth.

England won the gold medal in 3 minutes 00.40 seconds, Wales the silver and Bahamas the bronze.

Sri Lanka's two shuttlers did well to enter the third rounds of the men's and women's singles. In the men's singles, Niluka Karunaratne beat Paul Le Cocq in the first round 3-0 and R. Milroy of Canada 3-2 (5-7, 0-7, 7-0, 7-4, 7-4) in the second, while in the women's singles, Chandrika de Silva beat Kelsey Coombs-Goodfellow of Jersey 3-1 in the first-round and A. Butt of Pakistan 3-0 (7-2, 7-2, 7-0) in the second. However, the Sri Lankans failed to win their first-round match in the mixed doubles losing to M. Huges and R. Ashworth of Wales 1-3 (0-7, 2-7, 7-3, 4-7).

Boxer Ratnayake failed to enter the quarter-finals of the fly weight losing to S. Gautheir, while in shooting, Gamini Walgama and Suranga Fernando failed in the men's 10 metres air pistol - singles event. Walgama was 17th and Suranga Fernando was 23rd. Shooter Pushpamali Ratnayake was sixth with 386 in the women's 10 metre air rifle singles event with Kumari Pussella finishing 22nd in the same event with 363.

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