Swimmer Daniel Lee wins his first round heat

Dinesh WEERAWANSA reporting from Qatar

ASIAN GAMES: Sri Lanka's promising swimmer Daniel Lee won his first round heat at the 15th Asian Games swimming competition worked off at Hamad Aquatic Centre here on Sunday.

It was some kind of a relief for Sri Lanka after the early unimpressive performances by their swimmers and shooters on the first two days.

Competing in lane one of the men's 200m freestyle heat number two, Lee clocked two minutes and 01.02 seconds to win the race. Lee was closely followed by Mayssara Elaarag of Qatar (2:01.03) and Heshan Unamboowe of Sri Lanka (2:01.60). Of the five men's 200m first round heats, the race that the Lankan emerged victorious was the slowest.

Nevertheless, Lee will have a gigantic task ahead in the second round. All eight competitors of the heat five won by South Korean Tae Hwan Park (who has the most impressive timing of 1:49.75 amongst all competitors), accounted for better timings than Lee.

Even the men's 200m heat four, won by China's Lin Zhang (1:50.96) had seven competitors who came out with better timings than Lee.

In the first round heats of men's 100m butterfly, Sri Lanka's Milinda Wickremasinghe finished fifth with a timing of one minute and 02.13 seconds. Ram Anys came first in 58.31 seconds.

Sri Lanka shooters continued to be off colour with no notable performance coming from any of them. South Asian Games gold medalist Mangala Samarakoon fired to a 579-point total to finish fifth in first round heat two of men's 50m air rifle prone event. In the men's 10m air rifle event qualification, S. Edirisinghe settled for 38th place with an aggregate of 562. Finishing first was China's Zongliang Tan with a score of 588.

In the women's 10m air pistol qualification, Sri Lanka's Damayanthi Wijeratne fired a total of 371 points to finish 35th while her team mate Hemantha Wijesinghe was 42nd with 368 out of 60 competitors.

China's Luna Tao kept a sharp eye in firing 97, 98, 98, 98 to total a new Asian record of 391.

Last morning's men's road cycling event saw Sri Lanka's K. Lukuge finishing 29th with a timing of four hours, 18 minutes and 11 seconds.

He finished 33 minutes and nine second behind the winner - Kam Po Wang of Hong Kong who survived an exciting photo finish.

Wang, along with Iranian Mehat Sorabi and Korean Sung Baek Park, who finished second and third respectively, had an identical timing of 3:45.02.

Sri Lanka's Hemantha Kumara, who was among the 95 competitors to come under the starter's order for the 156.4km three-lap race, pulled out midway due to an injury.

At the Al-Arabi Indoor Hall, Sri Lanka's Thilina Piyadasa and Kalpani Herath emerged victorious in their mixed doubles round one TT tie.

They survived a 30-minute four setter to beat Mongolians Altantulga Lhagvadorj and Batkhishig Batsaikhan by three sets to one.

It was a commendable performance by the Lankan duo who staged a magnificent comeback after losing the first set 9-11 after a keenly contested tussle.

But Piyadasa and Herath played some intelligent shots to recover quickly and won the next three sets 11-9, 12-10, 11-5 and with it, made it to the pre-quarter finals of the mixed doubles.

But Sirisena and Deepika Rodrigo lost to North Korea's S.C. Kim and W.O. Ryo by three sets to nil in the first round of the mixed doubles table tennis competition. The Korean duo did not waste much time in shaming the Lankans 11-4, 11-2, 11-7 in a 15-minute job.

In two titanic struggles, India lost both its showpiece matches in the morning session of the mixed doubles. Some of the matches lasted only three two-minute rounds, but the match between Indian pair Soumyadeep Roy and Mouma Das - the South Asian champions, and Singapore duo G.A.O. Ning and Xue Ling Zhang enthralled a sizeable crowd.

Roy and Das raced into an early lead in the first set, but then frittered it away to lose 11-9. A similar pattern developed in the second set, but this time Roy and Das held their nerve to win it 11-8.

An objection lodged against Gao's white wristband - which was upheld and saw the wristband taped over - seemed to fire up the Singaporeans and they took the third set comfortably, 11-3.

The fourth set produced excellent rallies and scintillating shots. Locked at 9-9 and then 10-10, it could have gone either way, but the steely concentration of Gao and Zhang saw them prevail 12-10.

Most of the morning's other matches were straightforward and produced no upsets: Kim Song Choi and Ryom Won Ok of North Korea toyed with Sri Lanka's Rohana Sirisena and Deepika Rodrigo, 11-4, 11-2, 11-7 in 15 minutes, while Chuang Chih Yuan and Huang Yi Hua of Chinese Taipei sent Macau China's Vong Hon Weng and Wong Sio Leng packing in just 10 minutes, the score 11-5, 11-5, 11-3.