Sri Lanka’s ace woman pole vaulter Sachini Perera found conditions ideal again as she improved on her own Sri Lanka record with a leap of 3.70m at the second selection trial held at the Mahinda Rajapaksa Stadium in Diyagama on Friday.
She established a new record of 3.65m at the first selection trial held last month at the Sugathadasa Stadium and now she bettered it again.
Meanwhile, Olympian Sumedha Ranasinghe recorded the second best feat of his career in the Javelin throw with a distance of 81.79m to achieve qualification standard for the Asian Games at the second Asian Games trials on Thursday (10).
Sumedha who set the Sri Lanka record of 83.03m in 2015, became the first Sri Lankan Javelin thrower to qualify for the Olympics and competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics, but did not have a great outing thereafter.
But on Thursday at the new venue, Ranasinghe returned to the range of his best throwing, while also achieving the elite pool qualification standard of 80.50m.
Extreme heat at the stadium did not help the athletes’ cause, while both men and women 100m finals suffered from unfavourable wind. Rumeshika Ratnayaka sealed the 100m women’s title in 11.84 seconds, turning tables on recent champion Amasha de Silva in a photo finish. Amasha also clocked in at 11.84 seconds. Chamod Yodasinghe sealed the men’s 100m title.
The 400m women’s final saw two World Junior qualifications, as Tharushi Karunaratne stunned the arena by winning the senior women’s 400m race with a personal best of 54.29 seconds, thus meeting the World Junior Athletics Championship qualification standard of 55.20 seconds.
The 17-year-old Tharushi Karunaratne who had earlier qualified in the 400m for the World Junior Championship on the first day, excelled in the women’s 800m event to win in a time of 2:06.99 beating national champion Dilshi Kumarasinghe into second place. (TBR)