Reporting from Tokyo
TOKYO — She had only 20-odd seconds to debut on the Olympic stage, and Veronica Shanti Pereira made them count as she clocked a season-best 23.96 sec in the women’s 200m heats at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium on Monday (2 August).
However, the timing was not enough to advance the 24-year-old into the semi-finals, as she was place sixth in her heats. The Bahamas’ Anthonique Strachan (22.76sec), Portugal’s Lorene Dorcas Bazolo (23.21sec) and Italy’s Dalia Kaddari (23.26sec) qualified from the heat.
With Monday’s run, Pereira became the first female sprinter to represent Singapore at the Olympic Games in 65 years, after Mary Klass (100m and 200m) and Janet Jesudason (100m) in Melbourne in 1956.
She was one of the final Team Singapore athletes to receive a spot at the Tokyo Olympics, after World Athletics approved her universality place early last month.
She holds the national records for the women’s 100m and 200m, and memorably set the 200m national record of 23.60 seconds while winning gold at the 2015 SEA Games, the first time in 42 years that Singapore had won a sprint gold at the biennial event.
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