Amasha secures silver at NISSAC
Medhani, Amasha, Safiya and Shelinda at NISSAC
Sri Lanka secured two medals and are in line for a few more at the 60th National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championship (NISSAC) at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala, Punjab by the end of second day of the meet.
Sprinter Amasha de Silva secured a silver medal for Sri Lanka yesterday in the Women’s 100m final, following Lakshika Sugandi’s bronze in the Women’s 100m hurdles on Friday. Earlier the Sri Lanka 4x100m women’s relay team qualified for the final.
De Silva, clocked 11.59seconds in yesterday’s 100m final, as she finished between two Tamil Nadu sprinters Dhana Lakshmi and S.S. Archana, who secured the gold and bronze medals respectively. Dhana Lakshmi, who was beaten by de Silva earlier in the heats, clocked 11.52seconds in the final which had a close finish among the top finishers. Archana clocked 11.60seconds, as de Silva had a late start that probably cost her a few milliseconds at the end.
De Silva qualified for the final after clocking 11.64seconds to win the Heat 3 ahead of Dhana Lakshmi of Tamil Nadu (11.67secs) and Hima Das of Assam (12.01secs). Shelinda Jansen clocked 12.05seconds in the 100m Heat 1 earlier yesterday but failed to qualify for the final of the event. She finished behind Dutee Chand of Odisha, who clocked 11.76seconds and Daneshwari of Karnataka clocked 11.93seconds at first and second.
The Sri Lanka Women’s 4x100m relay team of Amasha de Silva, Shelinda Jansen, Safiya Yamic and teenager Medhani Mayadunne clocked 45.30 seconds to qualify to the final of the event. The Lankan lasses finished second behind Team India and ahead of Team Telangana in the heats, to clock the ninth fastest Sri Lankan timing in the event, despite teaming up for the first time sans much preparation.
However despite the little time the team got to spend together following a long journey and jet lag, the four lasses displayed much ease to qualify for the final of the Women’s 4x100m to be held on Tuesday at 7.00pm local time.
With restricted travel advisories, the Sri Lanka team had to fly via Doha, Qatar to reach the Indian capital of Delhi and then to Chandigarh, which took almost 30 hours with strangely long transit periods.
Earlier, on the opening day of the meet, Lakshika Sugandi won the bronze medal in the Women’s 100m hurdles clocking 13.90seconds. C. Kanimozhi from Tamil Nadu clocked 13.66seconds to win the gold medal and Agasara Nandini, also from Tamil Nadu, won the silver medal clocking 13.70seconds. The Lankan made a rousing start and was the fastest of the lot, but the two Indians made late acceleration to finish ahead of her.
Among the fleet of Indian athletes, a team of 10 from Sri Lanka are one of the foreign teams that are competing in the meet which also serves as the last competition to qualify for Tokyo Olympics to be held from July 23 to August 8.
Kalinga Kumarage and Nadeesha Ramanayake will be in action today as the heats of the Men’s and Women’s 400m events begin from 7.00am local time during the morning session. According to latest rankings of World Athletics Ramanayake is ranked 59th in the world.
During the evening session at 7.20pm Nimali Liyanaarachchi will compete in the Women’s 800m event. She’s been ranked 57th in global rankings according to the latest release on June 15 of World Athletics.
Nilani Rathnayake, who is ranked among the world 32 with a clear opportunity of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, will be seen in action on the fifth and final day on June 29 when the Women’s 3000m Steeple Chase event begins at 8.10pm local time.
The 60th NISSAC has been graded a ‘B’ category event to achieve the World Athletics rankings and the Olympic qualification which sees its deadline on June 29. The first day of the five-day had six finals — Men’s 10000m and Pole Vault and Women’s 5000m, 100m Hurdles, Triple Jump and Hammer Throw. Yesterday finals of the Men’s and Women’s 400m and 100m events and the Men’s 1500m event took place. Three more finals are scheduled to take place tomorrow followed by nine finals each on the final two days of the meet.