Shanti Pereira ends her Olympics after finishing last in heats, missing out on semi-finals

S’pore’s Shanti Pereira ends with time of 23.45s in 200m repechage round at the Paris Olympics

Singaporean national sprinter Shanti Pereira has ended her time at the Paris Olympics after failing to make the semi-finals of the women’s 200m sprint event.

She came in last with a timing of 23.45 seconds in the repechage round.

Shanti competed in 2nd-chance round on 5 Aug

Shanti, 27, was competing in the repechage round on Monday (5 Aug) evening at the Stade de France, vying with six other competitors for a spot in the semi-finals.

The repechage round is a new format, giving athletes who didn’t qualify for the semi-finals through the heats a second chance to qualify.

Only six would qualify for the semis — the winners of the four repechage heats and the next two fastest.

Shanti made it to the repechage after clocking 23.21s to come in last in Heat 5 on Sunday (4 Aug) – and 31st out of 45 runners.

Shanti came in last in repechage

As it happened, Shanti came in last in her repechage round too, finishing with a time of 23.45s.

Canadian runner Jacqueline Madogo came in first, with a personal best of 22.58s.

Shanti ended up in 18th place among the 24 sprinters in the repechage.

Shanti sad & heartbroken as Olympics dream ends

Shanti was emotional after her Olympics officially ended, telling The Straits Times (ST) that “it just sucks” and she was “sad” and “heartbroken”.

She said she was looking forward to better results at the Olympics and targeted a semi-final spot at least.

However, she suffered a leg injury in April, meaning she couldn’t put weight on her right leg for six weeks.

That meant that she didn’t have enough time to prepare fully for the Olympics.

Shanti said the timing of the injury was “unfortunate” as it happened when she was supposed to start her season, meaning a lot of plans had to be changed.

S’poreans were hoping for successful Olympics for Shanti

Singaporeans were hoping for a good Olympics outing for Shanti, especially after a successful 2023 for her.

She memorably won gold at the 200m event in the Asian Games, Singapore’s first in track and field since 1974.

At the same Asian Games, she also won a silver in the 100m, which was Singapore’s first medal of any kind in track and field in 49 years.

Shanti had qualified for Paris by virtue of her performance at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, where she also notched her national record of 22.57s.

Over a week before the Olympics started, she had also become the first Singaporean to qualify for the 100m at the Olympics.

Unfortunately, she failed to make it to the 100m semi-finals too, finishing 55th out of 72 sprinters with a time of 11.63s.

However, she won’t be giving up after this setback, telling ST that her goal is to make it for the next Olympics in 2028.

Also read: Singapore’s Shanti Pereira clocks 23.21s in 200m sprint heats at the Paris Olympics, finishes last in group

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Featured image adapted from Singapore National Olympic Council via Singapore Athletics on Facebook.