by Reemus Fernando   

Long jumper Sarangi Silva, steeplechase athlete Nilani Ratnayake and US based high jumper Ushan Thivanka opened their 2022 season producing remarkable performances that will boost country’s chances at forthcoming major international multi sports events.

Silva established a new national record in the women’s long jump as she twice lowered her own national mark on the final day of the first Selection Trial at the Sugathadasa Stadium on Saturday. The South Asian Games gold medallist cleared 6.65 metres to establish the new national record. The performance will augur well for the athlete who is aspiring to achieve success at this year’s Asian Games.

What was remarkable in Sarangi’s achievement was the consistency. All of her four legal jumps were measured over six metres and two of them were over the previous record mark.

Sarangi had 6.48 metres as her national record from last year. Her four legal jumps on Saturday were measured at 6.51m, 6.65m, 6.16m and 6.37m. Incidentally, the gold medal of the last Asian Games women’s long jump was (Bùi Th? Thu Th?o of Vietnam) decided by a performance of 6.55 metres.

Ratnayake, who missed the Tokyo Olympics after being a strong contender for a better part of the last year, returned a time of nine minutes and 47.47 seconds to complete the women’s 3,000 metres steeplechase event at the Selection Trial. Lack of competition made her compete against herself and she came almost close to breaking her national record (9:46.76 secs) established in 2018. The impressive feat now warrants a place in the elite pool as she has come within medal winning performances at Asian level. At world level so far only two athletes have run the distance below ten minutes this year.

The US based high jumper Ushan Thivanka meanwhile commenced his season with a 2.25 metres performance at an indoor meet there. Thivanka was among the highest ranked Sri Lankan athletes last year, though he could not make it to the Olympics after running short of quality competitions to improve his world rankings. Thivanka’s impressive 2.25 metres feat will rank among the top ten Indoor performances of the world this year. In the Asian region he will have a close competitor from neighboring India as Tejaswin Shankar has a 2.25 metres from last December.

Sri Lanka will have a number of international competitions this year including the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games. Country’s track and field athletes have not excelled at the Asian Games during recent times despite history’s highest number of Games medal coming from that sport. Sri Lanka Athletics will be looking forward to enter a strong team for the Asian Games. With the all three above mentioned athletes having shown promise early in the season things look bright for track and field as better performances could be expected later in the season.