Abeysinghe achieves FINA world championship qualifying status

Matthew Abeysinghe of Killer Whale Aquatics achieved a FINA 'B' qualifying time to secure his berth for the Kazan 2015 FINA World Championships at the FINA approved Swimming Selections concluded at the Sugathadasa Stadium, Colombo yesterday.

Matthew swam passed the FINA 'B' qualifying time of 51.12 seconds completing the 100m Freestyle in 50.87 seconds, while missing his own national record by a millisecond which he established last year at the Youth Olympic Gamesin Nanjing, China.

The achievement is significant, as he becomes the first Sri Lankan swimmer to achieve a FINA qualification time for the World Championships as opposed to previous Sri Lankan participation by universality places popularly known as 'wildcards'.

"I am happy with this time since this trial was in the middle of the season and we swam without tapering. My target is to better this at the World Championships and try and get as close as possible to the 'A' and work at qualifying for Rio next year", said Matthew Abeysinghe.

Matthew previously achieved qualification for the Youth Olympic Games and placed 13th overall last year.

The 'B' qualifying time is lesser than FINA's 'A' standard and allows the entry of one swimmer in an event. With one swimmer having achieved this time, Sri Lanka will be entitled to a further quota of three universality places to be distributed between the sexes.

Of this quota two other swimmers, Cherantha de Silva of Ananda College and Kimiko Raheem of Asian International School will be certain of their participation having been selected by FINA for the Targeting Rio 2016 Olympics Training Scholarship.

The two swimmers will shortly be leaving the island to commence full-time training under a FINA monitored programme till June next year along with other Asian Olympic hopefuls at the Thanyapura Training Center in Phuket, Thailand. As part of their scholarship conditions the swimmers will automatically be eligible to swim at Kazan 2015.

The Selection Trials will also serve as the trial to select swimmers for the 5th FINA World Youth Swimming Championships to be held in Singapore in August.

The Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union (SLASU), the national controlling body having obtained approval for the conduct of this trial and a similar trial in March this year from FINA will present an analysis of the results to the Selection Committee for Aquatic Sports to confirm the athletes for all these international events in the coming week.