SL TEAM LEAVE FOR WORLD JUNIORS WITH HIGH HOPES
Sri Lanka’s athletes will be off to Tampere, Finland on Sunday (8th) with high hopes of winning Sri Lanka’s first medal at the IAAF World Junior (U-20) Championship, when the 2018 edition begins on 10 July.
Sri Lanka Junior athletics is at an all time high at the moment as record breaking youngsters produced nine medals, including two Golds at the last Asian Junior Athletic Championship in Japan, Sri Lanka’s best medal haul in its history.
They came on top of the junior Asian rankings and within the top positions of the world rankings for their performances in recent times. Just two days ago, steeple chase runner Parami Wasanthi Marisstella stunned them all in Bangkok as she won the Asian qualification for the Youth (U-18) Olympics with a record time of 6 minutes 35.20 seconds in the 2000m steeple chase, which elevated her to number one position at the youth world rankings for the event.
But all eyes at the World Juniors will be on Aruna Darshana, the golden boy hailing from Kanthale who reminisces early days of Sugath Thilakaratne when he shattered the Asian Junior record to win the 400m Gold in Japan with a 45.79 seconds timing, the best by any Sri Lankan since 2006.
His time was ranked 4th on paper: There are four entries with better timings than him on paper but with the competition rule limiting to just two athletes per country, one Jamaican athlete out of the top three will have to sit out leaving two Jamaicans and one US athlete ahead of Aruna. But, the time of 45.79 which is considered in comparison, wasn’t Aruna’s best.
He was very much relaxed when he clocked that time and won the Asian Juniors and was visible that he had much energy left in the tank. Also, the silver at the last World Junior Championship was won in a time of 46.21 seconds which lit up further hopes about a medal for Aruna at the World Juniors.
Aruna will be anchoring the SL 4x400m relay team too which has a good chance of a medal. This is the best junior relay team SL ever had and the timing they achieved to win both, South Asian Juniors and Asian Junior in no way justified their ability, as their individual times meant that they can easily touch 3 minutes 04 seconds mark.
In Girls events, Dilshi Kumarasinghe will be the one who is carrying hopes for a medal. Coming from A. Rathnayaka CC Walala, Dilshi is known to create her own races during a competition where she had produced medals in all the events she competed in both at the Asian and South Asian Juniors so far, which includes 400m, 800m and 4x400m.
The steeple chase runner Parami Wasanthi is number one in the world in the 2000m event but when it comes to the under-20 3000m steeple chase she has a lot to improve as the 17-year-old will have a good learning curve before the youth Olympic Games.
Sprinter Amasha de Silva, the silver medallist in both the 100m and 200m at Asian Juniors will find it much tougher to compete in Finland. As for her coach, they had to work a lot with her first 20 metres which along with a slow start was hampering her performance and said she is eyeing to clock around 11.5 seconds in 100m at the World Juniors.
Religious activates on the ground hampered preparation
Closing down of the Sugathadasa Stadium which was hired out for religious activities, hampered SL’s preparation for the event, as AASL plans to hold relay trials before the championship, had to be abandoned due to non-availability of the track.
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sri Lanka rented the Stadium for their International conference and the ground was closed since last 25th but athletes were given training facilities till 9 in the morning after the media highlighted the need of the venue for national and junior athletes. Electric wires laying on the track did not help the AASL who could not hold the relay trials on time.
AASL now expects to hold a relay trial in Finland before the competition to determine the best possible combination and lap order as certain members of both men and women relay teams did not perform as expected during the relays at the South Asian and Asian juniors.
