Harsha shines with Silver in Thailand

Middle distance runner Harsha Karunaratne raised the SL flag high in Thailand when he secured the Silver medal in the 800m at the second Asian Youth Athletics Championship continued at National Stadium Bangkok Sunday.

The 17 year-old was almost in gold medal position coming into the home straight and was in front at the 750m mark, but the determined athlete could not maintain his pace during the last 30m as he had given his all during the last 150m and failed to hold off Indian Abhishek Matthew who came hard at full throttle. Both athletes finished together and a photo finish had to be resorted to to determine the winner.

It took quite a while to adjudge the winner and Indian Matthew was awarded the gold in a time of 1 minute 54.991 seconds while Harsha won the silver in a time of 1 minute 54.993 seconds. Qi Zhan of China finished third.

Harsha is another product of A. Ratnayake Central Walala that has produced many international medal winners for Sri Lanka and is trained by head coach Susantha Fernando of Walala.

“I knew I will win a medal just after the heats and was aiming for the Gold medal,” said Harsha  following his valiant effort.

The youngster hailing from Hasalaka, Ududumbara, is the eldest in a family with two sisters and was selected to the Sports School, A. Ratnayaka Central Walala, following his impressive performance at the Central Province meet in 2014 when he was in grade nine.

Just like many SL athletes Harsha too hails from a low income family as his father is a driver while his mother is working at the school library.

In other events where SL athletes participated, Boy’s 400m runner Ravishka Indrajith (48.94sec) finished fourth, while in the girls’ 400m Sandumin Bandara (57.30 sec) finished in fifth position. Sprinter Sachini Divyanjali finished fifth in the 100m in a personal best effort of 12.25 seconds. Long Jumper Pramod Madubash could not qualify for the finals.

Earlier, Sri Lanka’s Asmika Herath gave up halfway in the 3000m race as she is targeting a medal in her pet event the 2000m steeple chase. According to meet rules if an athlete’s name had been entered for a particular event and did not participate in that event, he or she won’t be able to compete in other events too, and due to this rule Asmika had been forced to face the starter in the 3000m to keep her eligibility to run the 2000m steeple chase tomorrow, which is Sri Lanka’s prime medal hope.

India’s Gurindervir Singh (10.77 seconds) and China’s Lulu Feng (11.77 sec ) were the fastest boy and girl of the meet when they won the 100m respectively.