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| Thursday, 12 August 2004 |
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SL athletes in first work out Dinesh Weerawansa reporting from Greece ATHENS, Wednesday, Sri Lanka athletes completed their first major work out in Greece today as they began their final preparations for the Summer Games which starts on Friday. With exactly a week to go for the track and field events to commence at the Main Olympic Stadium, the training venues for athletes looked busy and crowded with many competitors gradually familiarising to local conditions. The Greek capital is experiencing excessive heat in the 2004 Summer with temperatures going up to as much as 30 degrees Celsius. However the weather is gradually becoming friendly to the European athletes as the temperature went down by four degrees today and is expected to go further down by the weekend. The Met Unit of the Laboratory of Atmosphetic Physics, Thessaloniki predicted rainy weather around the Main Stadium on Friday. But the humid conditions did not affect the Lankan athletes who trained under the watchful eyes of Sri Lanka national coach Lakshaman de Alwis and Sunil Gunawardena. High jumper Manjula Kumara Wijesekera is due to arrive here tomorrow and would immediately get down to training under Alwis. Gunawardena said Asian Games triple gold medalist Damayanthi Darsha has been working hard. However, he added that Darsha's year long lay off due to an injury has affected her career greatly. "She has been making a lot of effort, working hard when she returned to the track after one year. She is gradually catching up. But there has not been enough time for her to train up to high level and peak. Nevertheless, Darsha should make her presence felt and do well," he said. At the Olympic shooting range, Sri Lanka's Pushpamali Ramanayake spent a long firing session with her coach Colonel Pasan Kularatne. Ramanayake will be the first Sri Lankan to be seen in action at the Athens Olympiad when she takes part in women's 10m air rifle qualification round on Saturday morning. Ramanayake predicted a keen contest in her pet event but said her target would be to come out and better her career best highest score of 392. The 1994 Commonwealth Games gold medalist said the conditions are good and would make every effort to better her personal mark in her third Olympics. Though the Athens Olympics opening ceremony is scheduled for Friday, the Games proper starts tomorrow with archery - women's individual ranking round, at Dek Archery Field. But athletics - the most glamour sport of the Games, will commence only on August 18. The other most spectator attraction is soccer, especially after the hosts Greece won the recent Euro 2004 Soccer championship. The European soccer champions have been working hard and the expectations are high for the home team. Everything went smoothly during the last practice session of the Greek men's Olympic football team at the training site of Carilaou Stadium. Coach Efstratios Apostolakis even had Christos Karypidis at practice, since he was not included in the Paok FC delegation that played Maccabi Tel Aviv at Toumpa Stadium for the third leg of the Champions League preliminaries. Greece will play South Korea in their opening group 'A' match. |
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