Sri Lanka starving for medals at Asian level…..

Sri Lanka was starved of medals at the 21st Asian Athletics Championships which concluded at the Wuhan Sports Centre in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, however went on to bag jut a single medal on the final day of the meet.

This follows the country’s unimpressive run at the major athletic events in this calibre in the recent year.

Sri Lanka lost the hold of two silver medals which Nadeeka Lakmali and Sachith Maduranga won at the Pune 2013 Championships while the bronze medal in the 4×400 metres men’s relay was nowhere near this time.

Sri Lanka’s solitary medal was produced by Nimali Liyanarachchi when she won the bronze medal in her pet event, the women’s 800 metres final in the final day of the meet.

She missed the 23-year old Sri Lanka record, held by Sriyani Dhammika Menike by a whisker.

Nimali clocked two minutes 03.94 seconds and was just 0.09th of a second slower than Menike who ran a two minutes 03.85 second sprint to claim the national record during the Olympic Games in, Barcelona, Spain in 1992.

However, it was a pity moment for the rural athlete who brought honour for the country when there was no Sri Lankan flag for her to carry onto the podium at the medal ceremony.

Her training partner Gayanthika Abeyratne could not produced what was expected from her under the rainy and cold weather conditions that prevailed throughout the day, which made it extremely hard for athletes to reach their climax.

The rest of the athletes whom the Lankan camp had high hopes for medals at the Asian Championships this time, failed to live upto expectations.

A number of reasons could be given but the failure does not fade away even after a reasonable excuse.

Nadeeka Lakmali, the javelin queen of Sri Lanka had a hard time trying to gain her rhythm under the rainy conditions and was eventually placed fourth.

High jumper Manjula Kumara could have easily won a bronze medal if he did not sacrifice his third attempt, skipping 2.24 metres to go for 2.28 metres which he failed. Manjula cleared 2.20 metres and had to be satisfied with the sixth position.

However, the team manager cum lady chaperon, veteran coach Badra Gunawardena bears the opinion that there were doubts about the selection of the team from the beginning.

The members of the men’s 4x100metres relay team and young Rumeshika Kumari Ratnayake were not in the squad until the last moment.

However the boys of the relay team, namely Himasha Eshan, Shehan Ambepitiya, Suranjaya de Silva and Mohamed Ashroff went on to better the Sri Lanka record on two occasions on the second day of competition at Wuhan, clocking 39.38 seconds in the final but missed the bronze medal by a fraction of a second.

It is a known fact that the baton change of a relay event takes months to reach perfection. Sadly the team members who clocked a record time at Wuhan did not even know who they are going to hand over the baton to, until the last moment. They had started practicing together just six days prior to their departure from Colombo.

Chandrika Subhashini Rasnayake who won the first heat of Women’s 400 metres with ease, clocked an unimpressive 54.24 seconds to finish in the fifth position in her pet event, the women’s 400 metres final.

On the other hand, the emerging sprint star, Rumeshika who became the fastest female sprinter Sri Lanka has produced after legendary Susanthika Jayasinghe retired, was not even included in the squad. She had to go after the highest level of authorities, seeking justice, before she wore the Asian Athletics Championships bib.

The student of St. Joseph’s Balika, Kegalle, bettered her personal best, clocking 11.56 seconds and was placed sixth.

The position does not matter when it comes to Rumeshika’s case as the girl is just 19 years of age and this is her first Senior international meet.

The courageous sprinter who trains under veteran coach A D Nandawathi (Nanda), has shown tremendous improvement over the past few weeks, showing a vast improvement from 11.80 seconds and running 0.24 seconds faster within a matter of days.