101st Nationals draw more attention after Asian Championship success
The upcoming 101st National Athletic Championship, which will be held from July 28 to 30 at the Sugathadasa Stadium in Colombo will generate more interest, with Sri Lanka’s recent success at the Asian Athletic Championship 2023 held in Bangkok, Thailand. Accordingly over 750 participants, including athletes from India, Maldives and a few other countries from the region have confirmed their participation at the event.
This event will also serve as a qualification trial for a few upcoming regional and global events, with a few Sri Lankan athletes already recording their best performances at the recent Asian Championship. Sri Lanka was represented by a 13-member team who completed their mission in Bangkok, Thailand with great success, clinching a tally of eight medals to finish overall fourth. Sri Lanka claimed three gold, two silver and three bronze medals, and finished behind regional powerhouses Japan, China and India, indicating a productive era ahead.
Nadeesha Ramanayake
To make matters more exciting, Sri Lanka established two new meet records, with young middle distance runner Tharushi Karunaratne and the men’s 4x400m relay team bettering the timings in the Women’s 800m and the Men’s 4x400m Relay.
The 19-year-old prodigy from A. Ratnayake Central, Walala, Karunratne clocked 2:00.66 in the Women’s 800m final, which easily gave her the gold medal and put her name as the new owner of national record in the event. Inspired by her older brother, Harsha Karunaratne, also a medal winner at South Asian Games and Asian Youth level, Tharushi now becomes a top contender for Sri Lanka at the upcoming Asian Games and even the Olympics.
She bettered the timing of 2:01.16secs set by Zhang Jing of China at Fukuoka in Japan in 1998. The bronze medal in the event was won by veteran athlete Gayanthika Abeyratne, who clocked 2:03.25 secs. With her performance Karunaratne, as the Asian champion, is now at 56th in the qualification ranking of the Women’s 800m event of the World Championship to be held in Budapest, Hungary in August.
Tharushi Karunaratne
Appearing in her fourth major event, Karunaratne already has claimed two each of gold and silver medals at Asian Youth level, as she finished with a gold medal and two silver medals – running alongside Aruna Darshana, Kalinga Kumarage and Nadeesha Ramanayake in the 4x400m Mixed Relay team that clocked 3:15.41secs, and the 4x400m Women’s Relay team that clocked 3:33.27secs. The 4x400m Women’s relay team included Karunaratne, Ramanayake, Nishrendra Fernando and Sayuri Mendis. They clocked of 3:33.27secs, surpassing the previous timing of 3:35.06secs set by Nadeesha Ramanayake, Dilshi Kumarasinghe, Upamalika Ratnakumari and Nimali Liyanarachchi in Doha in 2019 and advanced to the 12th position in the World Championship.
The Men’s 4x400m Relay team comprising Rajitha Rajakaruna, Kalinga Kumarage, Aruna Dharshana and Pabasara Niku, clocked 3:01.56 to claim the Asian Championship record, as well as the national record after 23 years. The last a Sri Lanka Men’s 4x400m relay team won a medal was in 2006 when Rohan Pradeep Kumara, Rohitha Pushpakumara, Prasanna Amarasekara and Ashoka Jayasundara combined to claim the bronze medal at the Asian Games held in Qatar.
Men's 4x400m Relay Team
Sri Lanka’s first gold medal out of the total three, came from sprinter Nadeesha Ramanayake, who clocked 52.61secs in the Women’s 400m final. The 28-year-old became the eighth Sri Lankan athlete to claim an Asian Championship gold medal, thus recording her personal best in the event. The event was last won by Damayanthi Darsha in 2000. Darsha’s timing of 51.05secs in Jakarta, Indonesia, still stands as the meet record, yet Ramanayake recorded the third best timing by a Sri Lankan women 400m athlete. Ramanayake too completed the event with three medals – a gold and two silver. Earlier javelin thrower Nadeesha Lekhamge won the bronze medal with a new Sri Lankan record of 60.93 metres.