Rajakaruna wants Dharshana to reach personal best at Olympics

How SL athletes benefit from repechage round

by Reemus Fernando

Sri Lanka’s two track athletes will look to make the most of the repechage round when track and field events of the Paris Olympics commence on August 1.

Sprinter Aruna Dharshana and 800 metres specialist Tharushi Karunaratne will be looking to gain the maximum when the repechage round comes to effect at the Olympics.

“Our goal is to achieve the personal best performance. That is the realistic goal that we can set. Knowing that there is a repechage round will help athletes not only to stay in the spotlight but also to achieve their realistic goals,” Dharshana’s coach Asanka Rajakaruna said speaking to The Island from Paris on Tuesday.

Dharahana who is ranked 46th among 48 athletes who have qualified for the 400 metres has a personal best feat of 45.30 seconds. The top athletes vying for semi-final spots have all run sub 45 seconds during the qualifying period for Paris Olympics.

Karunaratne is ranked 44th among 48 athletes who have reached qualifying standards or received universality places for the women’s 800 metres. The Asian Games gold medallist has not come closer to matching her personal best feat of 2:00.66 seconds this year.

On such a back drop both Dharshana and Karunaratne are likely to benefit from the repechage round.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games introduced a new format of qualifying for semi-finals with the repechage round in the track events from the 200m to the 1500m.

There will be no fastest qualifiers in terms of time in events. The athletes who do not qualify from heats will get a second opportunity to qualify when they compete in the repechage round, which was introduced in 2022.

According to the new format every event will have four rounds, the preliminary, the repechage round, the semifinals and finals respectively.

Paris Olympics will see every athlete run at least two races, except in the 100 metres and events above 1500 metres. In the 100m athletes will only race in the preliminary, semifinal and final.