Junior sailors tie for first place

by Richard Dwight

The Sri Lanka junior optimist sailors, have with the future in mind, been rigorously trained and coached, for quite sometime at the Bologoda Lake.

This appears to be an ongoing process, the results of which has begun to show, when the junior sailors from Sri Lanka gave a good account of themselves, to beat Australia, Japan and UAE convincingly, whilst losing to New Zealand in their team event to tie for first place in the Non-Asian category, at the Asean Open Optimist Championship held in Port Dickson, Malaysian last week.

The youngsters from Sri Lanka did well to beat Japan in their match, but due to an ambiguity in the rules governing tie breaker positions, Sri Lanka had to be contented with a bronze medal, in the final placements. However, the International jury has decided to refer the matter to the World Body for sailing, ISAF for their opinion.

It might be mentioned, that the optimist (Junior) category, is sailed over 110 countries by over 150,000 young sailors under-16 years of age and, is becoming rapidly a major sport worldwide.

The now colluded Asean Optimist Sailing Championship, had 11 countries with a total of 73 boats. This happens to be the first major success for Sri Lanka's optimist sailors, in only their 3rd international event, which is very creditable, considering the limited resources available to our sailors in comparison to other competing countries.

The team now leaves for Pakistan next week, to participated in the South Asian Yachting Regatta, a tri-nations event between India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.