Organisers fine Sri Lankan cyclist and manager

Dinesh WEERAWANSA reporting from Qatar

ASIAN GAMES: Sri Lanka's cycling double gold medallist at South Asian Games Sriyalatha Wickremasinghe and her manager were fined by the Asian Games orgernisers yesterday for violating competition rules. Wickremasinghe was fined Swiss Francs 30 and her team manager Swiss Franc 100.

Wickremasinghe has been found guilty of gaining an undue advantage by sheltering behind a car during yesterday's women's 113km women's cycling road race.

Course marshals manning the two-lap route have observed the Lankan lass riding close to a motorcar, thereby gaining an advantage to reduce the wind resistance.

Officials here said this is a breach of the International Cycling Federation rules and regulations on road cycling.

"Rider No.38 Sriyalatha Wikremasinghe (SRI) was fined Swiss Franc 30 for sheltering behind a car. Sri Lanka team Manager Nilantha Fernando was fined Swiss Franc 100," said a statement by Games official Frederick Chan on behalf of the organizing committee.

The judgement has been given for violating UCI regulations paragraph 19:2.1.

Wickremasinghe finished only 21st in the 113-km women's cycling road race, clocking three hours, 11 minutes and 39 seconds. She came five minutes and 29 seconds behind the overall winner, Mayuko Hagiwara of Japan - 3:06.10, who bagged the gold medal.

However, Deputy Chef de mission Maxwell de Silva was unaware of the incident, despite the official communiqu, issued by the organising committee.

"We have not been informed about an incident of this nature. I met Sriyalatha and her Manager but they never told me anything to this effect," said De Silva who is the acting head of the strong 280-member Sri Lanka contingent.

De Silva also stated that Sri Lanka chief de mission Dian Gomes is due to arrive in Doha before the weekend. "He should join us in two days time," he said.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka's sweet success on the previous day's table tennis competition came to an end when they lost their respective pre-quarterfinal events today. Thilina Piyadasa and Kalpani Herath lost their mixed doubles tie to South Koreans J.W. Lee and E.H. Lee in straight sets 11-4, 11-2, 11-3 in just 12 minutes.

It was a similar 0-3 humiliation for Thilina Piyadasa and Rohana Sirisena in the pre-quarters of men's doubles where they went down to South Koream pair of J.W. Lee and S.E. Oh 11-4, 11-6, 11-7 in 15 minutes.

Sri Lanka shooters never were able to make an impact and capitalise on their success at the recent South Asian Games in Colombo. On the fourth day of the Asian Games shooting competition at Lusail Shooting Range, Sri Lanka's Edirisinghe Senanayake finished 26th out of 47 competitors in the qualification round of men's 50m pistol event.

He totalled 538 while China's Kun Xu had an impressive 565 to come on top. He went on to bag the gold medal with a final aggregate score of 663.8.

World Cup champion Xu, who qualified in top spot, has struck gold by winning the men's 50m air pistol final. In-form shooter fired the best final round to win with a score of 663.8 - more than three points ahead of silver medallist, Rashid Yunusmetov of Kazakhstan, who claimed his second Asian Games medal. He took bronze in Busan four years ago in the 10m air pistol team event.

Damayanthi Wijeratne (average of 9.156) and Hemantha Wijesinghe (9.100) secured 37th and 40th places respectively out of 55 women shooters who took part in the qualifying round of 25m pistol event. Chinese Ying Chen (9.783) and Luna Tao (9.778) ended on top. North Korea's Kim Jong Su claimed bronze, almost two points behind Yunusmetov with a score of 658.7.

China's Tan Zongliang missed out on a third medal of the Games by finishing fifth after losing a fourth-place shoot off against Japan's Susumu Kobayashi.

At the Aspire Hall, Sri Lanka surfed three more defeats in the badminton competition of the 44-nation Games. Dinuka Karunaratne lost to Indian Anup Sridhar 21-16, 21-12 in the men's singles qualifying round.

In the women's singles round one, Indonesian Fransiska beat Sri Lankan Thilini Jayasinghe, also in straight sets 21-12, 21-13.

Diluka and Dinuka Karunaratne lost to Indians Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar 6-21, 9-21 in men's doubles pre quarter finals.

Bahrain maintained their 100 percent record in the second round of the men's volleyball competition at Al-Rayyan Indoor Hall, but only after recovering from the loss of the first set to beat Thailand 23-25, 29-27, 25-20, 25-17.

Thailand had received a bye directly into pool B, unlike Bahrain who had to qualify through the preliminaries, and took the opening set after a quick spike by captain Supachai Jit Jumroom and two Bahraini service errors.

However Bahrain, who had beaten Hong Kong, China 3-0 on Saturday, fought back and despite Jit Jumroom's attempts to force the match into a final set it was not to be an opening victory for Thailand.

In the other pool B match, Hong Kong, China recovered from that loss to Bahrain to beat Macau, China 25-23, 25-18, 25-19. The first set was littered with errors by players receiving serves, but some powerful blocking by Hui Pui Tak was the key for Hong Kong, China.

India, the other team given direct entry to this stage, also suffered a 3-1 defeat to Saudi Arabia in pool A. The 25-21, 25-22, 23-25, 25-24 victory by the Saudis was their second of the round, following a 3-2 defeat of Kuwait.

Ahmed A Al Bakhet was the standout player for Saudi Arabia, top scoring with 22 points in a match that lasted 1 hour 43 minutes. Srinkanth Pakalapati scored 14 points for India in the defeat.

DOHA, Tuesday