SL team of seven athletes leave to Kyrgyzstan today

A Sri Lanka team of seven athletes will take wings Thursday (15th ) to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to compete at the Kyrgyzstan open Athletics Championship to be held on 17^th and 18^th of this month.

Any athlete who performs seriously well achieving the qualification standards of the Asian Championship may have an outside chance of making it to the Asian Athletics Team which is almost finalized now.

The 400m hurdler Aravinda Samaranayake who was impressive during the last few seasons will get another opportunity there to showcase his talent. He was beaten twice lately, once in the 2016 National Sports Festival and the other at the last national trials.  Aravinda will travel with his coach, former Asian Games medalist Ashoka Jayasundara who will be coach cum manager for the tour and they will target a sub 51 seconds in the 400m hurdles.

The team also includes long jumper Greshan Dhananjaya who achieved qualification standards for the Asian Championship during the junior nationals with a 7.89m leap but could not match that performance in the last national trials as he finished third.  Sprinter Mohommed Ashroff is also included in the tour and the sprinter will be eyeing a sub 10.5 second mark as he is not quite at his peak this year yet. The South Asian Games bronze medalist in the 100m clocked a modest 10.58 seconds when he finished second in the 100m final at the trials.

The rest of the team includes triple jumper Atheetha Karunasinghe, 800m runner HMS Kumara, High Jumper Dulanjali Ranasinghe and Triple Jump Junior National record holder Hashini Prabodha Balasooriya.

 

 

Team : Aravinda Samaranayake (400m Hurdle) , Greshan Dhananjaya (Long Jump), Mohommed Ashroff (100m) , Atheetha Karunasinghe (Triple Jump) , HMS Kumara (800m), Dulanjali Ranasinghe (Dulanjali Ranasinghe), Hashini Prabodha Balasooriya (Triple Jump)

Coach cum Manager –Ashoka Jayasundara