The 98th National Athletics Championship kicked off today (26th December) after much deliberation and hope for athletes, officials and fans alike. And on the very first day, Sarangi Silva won big!
A carefully orchestrated meet will take place on four stretched out days with events happening only in the first half of the day.
Day 1 of the Meet saw the finals of Men’s Shot Put, Men’s 5000m, Women’s 3000m Steeplechase, Long Jump, Men’s Javelin throw and the big event 200m.
3000m Steeplechase
Crowd favourite Nilani Rathnyake took on the race with familiarity and grit to take home Gold with a timing of 10:15.86min. Udaya Kumari representing Sri Lanka Army finished second at 11:13.35min while H.N Kumari took home Bronze with a time of 11:36.02min.
5000m – Men’s
RMS Pushpakumara, winner of the 5k and 10k events in last year’s National Meet claimed the Men’5000m title with ease. His time was clocked at 14:29.45min. A K Tharanga and D M Samarakoon came in second and third in the event respectively clocking 14:36.39min and 14:46.07min.
Long Jump
Sreshan Dhananjaya dominated the Men’s long jump pit to claim Gold with a distance of 7.71m to take home Gold. Not too long after, Sarangi Silva stole his spotlight in the Women’s event by stealing the National Record by 0.1cm. She claimed the NMR at 6.33m to be the only record holder of the day.
Silva’s counterpart Anjani Pulwansa claimed second place with a performance of 6.06m while M S Upeksha representing the SL Universities finished third with a jump of 5.63m.
Shot Put
Reigning champ Samith Fernando returned to Sugathadasa this time to make sure no one stole his title from him, and successfully defended so. His throw was marked at 16.12m. While veteran champ Samitha Jayawardene finished with Silver with a throw of 15.07m.
Javelin Throw – Men’s
S J Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka Army won the Men’s Javelin Throw event with a throw of 76.10m. W.L Dayarathne took second place marking 71.86m and Ranjith Kumara won Bronze with 69.43m.
200m
Kalinga Kumarage and Nadeesha Ramanayake took home massive wins in the Men’s and Women’s 200m races running down some familiar faces.
Kalinga Kumarage’s performance in the final was one for the books as he finished the race with a whole second ahead of Mohammed Safan. Kumarage’s winning time was 20.79sec while Safan edged out Aruna Darshana by 8 milliseconds to claim Silver. Safan’s final time was 21.41sec while Darshana finished with a time of 21.49.
While fans placed Darshana and Kumarage head-to-head before the final, Darshana came out of the pandemic rusty while Kumarage has taken advantage of the rest period to upgrade his game.
The Women’s race on the other hand was Nadeesha Ramanayake leading from the heats. With the absence of Shelinda Jansen and Sharmila Jaan this year, Ramanayake had the biggest opening to claim the title. She did just that at the end of 24.15sec to claim Gold.
Shafiya Yamick clocked in close with a 24.30sec with S.H Fernando of the Sri Lanka Navy finished third with a time of 24.83sec.
That concluded the events of Day 1 from the 98th National Athletics Championship. Stay logged for real-time results, results, records and videos from the 2020 Nationals only on ThePapare.com!
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