Senior Athletic season begin with trials tomorrow
National Senior Athletic season will begin with the first trials of the year tomorrow where local athletes will get their first shot at qualifying for the forthcoming Asian Championship as well as the IAAF World Championship in the two day event to be held at Mahinda Rajapaksa stadium Diyagama.
Although this meet was to be the trial to finalize SL team for the 22nd Asian Championship and since the Championship was postponed to July the Athletic Association (AASL) President Sugath Thilakaratne said they will be conducting another trial after this to finalize the team as they now have three more months for the Championship.
Also for the first time after nearly a year, Electronic timing devices will be available for use at the competition as country’s authorities have finally managed to get the old electronic timing unit repaired after countless appeals by athletes, media and others, throughout last year.
Himasha Eashan and Chandrika Subashini will be the big names to be missed out from the trials as Eashan, the SL and South Asian 100m record holder who is training in Jamaica, won’t be running the trials as he is schedule to fly direct to the Asian Grand Prix followed by the Asian Championship later this year.
Subashini the 400m specialist who missed out of running for a large part of last year following the South Asian Games (SAG) targeted a comeback at this trial but suffered from dengue fever hence will be miss out from this trials and will eye a return at the next trials prior to the Asian Championship.
Other than that, 100m hurdles champion and SAG bronze medallist Ireshani Rajasinghe and long jump SAG bronze medallist Sarangi Silva have submitted medical reports to AASL and will not be available for the trials.
Even though none of SL athletes are in close range of getting selected to the IAAF World Championship men’s long jump and high jump will be the events to watch as Manjula Kumara and Amila Jayasiri are closest to the target. Jayasiri leaped 8.15m in the long jump last year which was Olympic qualification standard but he was a little bit late to achieve the feat as Olympic Long jump event too will be held on the same day at Rio.
Wijesekara on the other hand missed out from the qualification by a whisker largely due to lack of competition for him during last year and the worn-out unhelpful tracks where both of them will get a bit more competition this year with Wijesekara already having one international competition followed by trials before the Asian Grand prix and another trail before going in to Asian Championship.
Jayasiri started the year well with 7.83m leap last week in Philippines and will be eyeing to performance better over the weekend.
Sumedha Ranasinghe produced a magical throw of 83.03m in the men’s javelin throw out of nowhere to qualify for the Olympics in latter part of 2015 SAG trials, but after that he only threw more than 80m once at the SAG. Ranasinghe started the year with a bronze medal in Australia with a 77 m throw under cold rainy conditions and will be eyeing to repeat his 2015 feet to book his ticket to London later this year.
Sri Lanka’s only medallist at the last Asian Championship, Nimali Liyanarachchi sealed two Gold medals’ in the 400m and 800m in Philippines last week but lack of competition there did not help her to get a better time. But this weekend she will get her local track rival Gayanthika Abeyrathne in her pet event the 800m. The last time those two battled it out went under Sri Lanka record in Jaffna at the National Sports Festival last year without a synthetic track or electronic timing and it will be interesting to see where they will end up over the weekend.
The Asian Championship will be held from 6-9 July at Odisha, India while IAAF World Championship will be held from August 5-13 in London, England.
