China emerge champions

Chinthana WASALA reporting from China

The third edition of the Asian Beach games concluded in style at the almost-new Eastern seaside town, just outside Haiyang in China on Friday. Hosts China dominated, but Thailand finished closely at the second slot. Sri Lanka, which bagged two bronze medals for the for the first time in the Beach Games history, finished 17th while three other South Asian countries finishing ahead of them.

India were placed 6th while Afghanistan and Pakistan were placed 9th and 13th respectively.

During Haiyang Asian Beach Games, 1601 athletes from 43 nations participated in 13 sports and 49 events. From June 12, the starting of beach volleyball till the end of all matches, there have been 412 matches in 94 units.

During the event, athletes from all participating nations had a splendid period filled with energy and enthusiasm which came with excellence. The audience which mostly included sports enthusiasts in and around Haiyang and Yantai, witnessed a superb beach sports extravaganza.

By hosting such a splendid sport event, Haiyang has greatly promoted the development of beach games.

During the event, all participants spoke highly of the field facilities. The time and scoring systems and other technical equipments were advanced and reliable.

Volunteers real stars

The splendid service provided by the volunteers during the games were unmatchable. All the volunteers who provided their services were either high school students or university students.

They were so humble and some of them who were final-year medical students, were even seen involving in sanitary services, cleaning, laundry services etc. Not only assisting the athletes and officials in and out of the field, the volunteers held burdens of making proper arrangements for media and other officials too, without being conceited on their status.The volunteers did far more work than what they were assigned for. Sri Lankan officials who participated in the tournament, highly commended them for their friendly services. No one made an omission and all of them were really polite.

“It is an honour to serve you” volunteers said when I asked them not to worry about my work, skipping their breakfast and lunch.

Sri Lanka will host the Asian Youth Games in 2017 and will have a lot of things to learn from the Haiyang Games’ volunteers.

A similar kind of service will be expected from the young Sri Lankan volunteers at the 2017 Games and that would be the time to show off the similarity when it comes to work.