The 42nd National Sports Festival, the first of its kind to be held in the Jaffna Peninsula, concluded today at the Durayyappah stadium in glamorous fashion with President Maithripala Sirisena gracing the closing ceremony as the chief guest of the event.
Western province retained the President Challenge trophy for yet another year having won 254 medals (113G, 74S, and 67B) while Southern province 105 medals (33G, 29S, 43B) & Central Province 107 medals (28G,38S, 41B) won the second and third places respectively.
The final day of the premier sports festival of the Island saw two meet records being established. In the women’s hammer throw event Manoji Amarasinghe of Southern Province created a new meet record with her throw of 45.85m. A. Maduwanthi of Uva Province also bettered the previous meet record managing a distance of 44.82m to win Silver.
In the men’s Javelin throw event Waruna Lakshan of Western Province clinched Gold with a throw of 78.52m and established a new meet record. It was an impressive performance by Lakshan to achieve this feet as the games was held on a grass track and not a synthetic track. It was visible that Lakshan was throwing well short of the popping crease as the area surrounding was slippery and could have gotten him disqualified.
Tug of War made its debut at the National sports festival with Western Province & Northern Province battling out in the women’s final while the men’s final was to be decided between Eastern Province & Western Province. Both Western Province teams were too hot for their opponents and walked away with the inaugural tug of war championships.
It was noteworthy that after 1984 it was the first time that 04 new Sri Lanka records were made at a National Sports Festival. Young pole vaulter from Jaffna J. Annitha opened the account reclaiming her Pole vault record with a jump of 3.41m.
Tharika Fernando was next to get on the record books in the women’s shot putt event when she won Gold with a performance of 15.25m.
Ishara Sandaruwan came out all guns blazing in the men’s pole vault competition and managed to better his own national record by 10cm clearing 5.10m.
With the first three records of the games coming from field events it was an absolute treat to witness WKLA Nimali coming out with a stellar run in the women’s 800m final to clinch a 24 year old Sri Lanka record established by Dhammika Manike at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. With the games being held on a grass track not much was expected from track athletes but a brilliant race between Sri Lanka’s ace 800m runners Gayanthika Abeyrathna & Nimali saw both runners bettering the previous national record with Nimali edging out Gayanthinka with a time of 2:03.5secs.
