Ernie Gawilan showed his pedigree but came up short of a place in the final after finishing in ninth place after the preliminary heats of the men’s 200-meter individual medley SM7 of the 2020 Summer Paralympics at the Tokyo Aquatics Center, Friday.
The reigning Asian ParaGames champion of the said event had to come back at the last leg of the race — the freestyle leg — to take fifth place in the first of two heats with a time of 2:50.49, nearly 8 seconds off the pace of the last qualifier in Argentina’s Pipo Carlomagno.
Gawilan lagged behind after the butterfly leg, but recovered in the backstroke leg to push RPC athlete Egor Efrosinin into sixth place after the first 100 meters, with 1:19:24 against the latter’s 1:24.14.
Efrosonin, however, was bliserting in the next 50 meters, to edge out the 30-year-old native of Paquibato, Davao City. Nonetheless, Gawilan in turn powered through the last leg to finish ahead of the former by less than a second.
The first heat turned out to be the faster of the two heats as its winner in Israel’s Mark Malyar came up with the fastest qualifying time of 2:32.86, with Argentina’s Inaki Basiloff not far behind with 2:33.23. Basiloff also came from the said heat.
Gawilan will look to bounce back on Saturday as he competes in the 400-meter freestyle S7 heats at 8:07 a.m., Manila time.
