Archer Bandara set to meet India’s Chikara    

Archer Sampath Bandara is set to meet India’s Vivek Chikara in the men’s Individual Recurve elimination round after being ranked 23rd in the Open Ranking Round held at the Yumenoshima Ranking Field at the Tokyo Paralympics on Friday.

Bandara was ranked 23rd out of 31 after settling for a score of 589 points yesterday. Chikara, the rival for next week’s elimination round was ranked 10th after the Open Ranking Round. he had a score of 609 points, which was rated as his Paralympic best.

Gholamreza Rahimi of Iran led the field with a Paralympic record score of 644 points as 23 of his arrows hit the bull’s-eye. Gholamreza broke compatriot Ranjbarkivaj Ebrahim’s record of 637 points established at the Rio Games in 2016.  Bandara had a first-half score of 289 points but managed to improve that in the second half with an aggregate of 300 points. That helped him secure the 23rd rank. Now he will have seven days to prepare for the elimination round. The elimination round event between Bandara and Chikara will be held on Friday (Sep 3).

In the men’s single sculls, rower Mahesh Jayakody was placed sixth in his heat but will get a second chance today when he takes part in the repechage heats where he will row against the Russian Paralympic Committee’s Chuvashev Aleksey, Britain’s Pritchard Benjamin, Spain’s Reja Munoz Javier, and USA’s Haxton Blake for the first two places to progress to the ‘A’ Final. In the heat, Jayakody clocked 12:16.80. Ukraine’ Polianskyi Roman who came first in a time of 9:56.47 in Jayakody’s heat was the fastest of the two heats. While Roman advanced to the ‘A’ final from heat two, Brazil’s Campos Pereira Rene advanced to the final from the first heat. All others will compete in repechage heats today.

In wheelchair tennis, Ranjan Darmasena lost his men’s singles encounter in straight sets to Alexander Cataldo of Chile. Cataldo scored 6-3, 6-4 to advance to the second round.

 (RF)