Dulanjan dives bronze in Victoria
Champion diver Dulanjan Fernando, domiciled in Australia, is keeping alive his dreams of representing Sri Lanka at the 2022 Commonwealth Games after winning a bronze medal at the 10-metre platform event at the Victorian State Open Championship last weekend.
Representing Mel Am Diving Club from Melbourne, he competed in the 1m springboard and his favourite platform event.
"I am a little disappointed about my 1m event as I couldn't get into finals" he said.
He came fourth in the preliminary round of the platform event held on the same day.
"I managed to do some couple of good dives in the preliminary round and didn't expect to get into the finals from this platform event but I ended up becoming fourth in the preliminary round which means I qualified for platform finals. I knew I had a small chance of winning a medal and also I knew I need to nail every single dive to get that medal," he stated.
"I remember my coach telling me to visualise my dives before the finals which I did and it helped me a lot for my final dives. And I ended up becoming third in the platform event. My coach was so happy for me and it was a good competition and really good experience for me," said the 21-year-old former Royal College sports star, who is studying for a degree in Sports Science at Deakin University in Melbourne.
Axed after being selected to represent Sri Lanka at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, Dulanjan has reignited his dreams after competing in the 19- 24 Men’s category at the Victorian Age National Championship in Melbourne. He won gold in the 1m and 3m springboard events to qualify for Australian Age National Championship in Queensland where he came fourth in the 3m and second in the 1m events. He also achieved personal bests of 278 points (3m) in Melbourne and 287 points (1m) in Queensland.
"It was really good competition for everyone because it was the qualifying competition for the Olympic Games this year. Many Australian professional divers participated in this competition and it was a good experience for me as well. Competing with Olympians is the best experience I had in my life because I met so many Australian professional divers," he stated in an interview with the Sunday Times.
"Unfortunately, I couldn't qualify for the Australian Nationals," said Dulanjan, who won three silver medals in diving at the 2016 Singapore Invitation National Championship competing in the 17-22 age category and also a silver and bronze medal in the South Asian Championship held in Colombo.
He still has hopes of qualifying for the Australian Nationals though financial constraints may prevent his participation.
"There's another qualifying competition in two weeks but I was thinking not to participate in that because I don't have enough savings to spend that much money. Because in Melbourne when it comes to competition entry fees, it's a bit expensive. It's like 120 dollars per event and total almost 400 dollars. So, I'm going to focus on my next big competition which is in November in Gold Coast. I have enough time to save some money for that," said Dulanjan, who was placed among the top eight at the 2016 Asian Championship in Tokyo in the 10m event.