Singapore sprinter Shanti Pereira betters European rivals in 200m win

SINGAPORE – National sprinter Shanti Pereira is used to leaving her regional rivals in the dust.

But, on Saturday, she outclassed seven other European competitors to win the 200m final at the Athleticageneve meet at the Bout-du-Monde Sports Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.

Running in lane six, Pereira clocked 22.84 seconds to finish first ahead of the Netherlands’ Tasa Jiya (22.88) and Irish athlete Sharlene Mawdsley (23.18). Her time was just 0.15sec off her personal best and national record of 22.69.

In the 100m A final earlier, Pereira was fourth out of eight runners in 11.38sec, which was 0.12sec off her personal best.

On Sunday, she clocked 11.78sec to finish third out of seven in her 100m race at the Meeting International d’Annecy, a European Athletics Promotion event in France. She also won the 200m in 23.33sec, finishing 0.15sec and 0.51 sec ahead of Benedetta Kouakou of the Ivory Coast and Canada’s Madeline Price respectively.

The Geneva meet is a World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze event, which allows Pereira, 26, to gain more ranking points as she tries to qualify for the Aug 19-27 World Athletics Championships in Budapest.

Athletes can either meet the world athletics championships qualifying standards or qualify through their world-rankings positions. The qualifying times for the 100m and 200m are 11.08 and 22.60.

Her training stint in Europe got off to a solid start in end-May, when she broke her own 100m national mark twice, in the heats and the final when she ran 11.26 at the 58th International Pentecost Sport Meeting in Rehlingen, Germany. 

In May, she clinched

a historic sprint double at the Cambodia SEA Games.

She will return to Singapore on June 21 to prepare for the July 12-16 Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok and the Hangzhou Asian Games from Sept 23 to Oct 8.