Let’s reminisce about the special moments of the past year 2023 in the national and international sports field.
The local Sports Field
Starting with a ban
FIFA imposed a ban on Sri Lankan football at the beginning of last year, which lasted for about eight months and was lifted on certain conditions last August.
Also, World Rugby imposed a ban on Sri Lankan rugby in the month of May and therefore the Sri Lankan rugby team even had to play under the Olympic Committee flag (OCA) in the Asian Games. The ban was lifted again last November.
Asian Youth Athletics Championship 2023
Nilupul Phasara (high jump) and Tushen Silva (pole vault) won silver medals for Sri Lanka in the tournament, while Ayomal Akalankah (400m hurdles) and Nirmali Wickramasinghe (800m) won bronze medals. Our athletes were managed to take Sri Lanka to the 13th in the medal table with a total of 4 medals. Championship was held in Uzbekistan from April 27-30.
Asian Under-20 Athletics Championship
In this tournament, Sri Lanka won two gold medals and Tharushi Karunaratne (800m, 400m×4 women) managed to contribute to the double.
Apart from this, Tharushi also managed to win the silver medal in the 400m event. Also, Sri Lanka’s Jayeshi Uttara won the bronze medal in that event, while Malith Yasiru who represented the men’s triple jump event, also managed to win a bronze medal. In this championship, with a total of five medals, Sri Lanka managed to occupy the 7th place in the medal table. This was held in South Korea from 4th to 7th June.
Asian Youth Netball Championship
After losing to Malaysia in the semi-final of this tournament held in South Korea, the Sri Lankan young players managed to win the third place in the tournament due to the victory against the Hong Kong team.
World Para Athletics Championships 2023
Representing Sri Lanka in this tournament, Samitha Dhulan won a bronze medal in the F64 men’s javelin throw event and also Dinesh Priyantha won a bronze medal in the F46 javelin event.
Sri Lanka finished 59th in the medal table with two overall medals.
Asian Athletics Championship 2023
This can be introduced as the championship that managed to keep Sri Lanka’s name at the top of last year’s athletics field.
Here, Sri Lanka managed to win a total of 08 medals with three gold medals, two silver medals and three bronze medals. Along with this, Sri Lanka also occupied the fourth place in the medal table.
Gold Medals
- Women’s 400m – Nadeesha Ramanayake
- Women’s 800m – Tharushi Karunarathna
- Men’s 4x400m relay
Silver Medals
- Women’s 4x400m relay
- Mix 4x400m relay
Bronze Medals
- Women’s Javelin Throw
- Women’s 1500m – Gayanthika Abeyrathna
- Women’s 800m – Gayanthika Abeyrathna
World Netball championship
This year Women’s Netball World Cup was held in South Africa, but did not bring much good results to Sri Lanka.
Although Sri Lanka entered this tournament as the current Asian champions, they got the last place in the tournament. Here, the Sri Lankan team lost against Singapore ( Asian runners-up). However, for the first time in the history of the World Cup, Sri Lanka managed to achieve the historic opportunity of defeating a team other than Singapore by defeating the Barbados team.
Meanwhile, after this tournament, Tarjani Sivalingam, who can be introduced as the greatest netball player ever born from Sri Lanka, also decided to retire from the game.
Youth Commonwealth Games
Ayomal Akalanka (400m Hurdles) and Nilupul Phasara (High Jump) who also won medals at the Youth Asian Games won silver and bronze medals respectively in Youth Commonwealth Games which held at Trinidad and Tobago from 4th to 11th of August.
19th Asian Games 2023
This year, Sri Lanka was able to complete one of the greatest Asian Games in the history of Sri Lankan sports, and the athletics sportsmen and sportswomen got more respect from the tournament. While Sri Lanka Women’s Cricket Team and Nadisha Lekamge (javelin throw) won silver medals, Women’s 4x400m relay and Men’s 400×4 relay teams managed to win bronze medals.
However, this year, Tharushi Karunaratne, who was the main athlete in bringing Sri Lankan athletics to international attention, managed to win a gold medal for Sri Lanka in the 800m event after 21 years in an Asian Games.
Sri Lanka won the 8th place in the athletics medal table and the 26th place in the overall medal table in this year’s Asian Games.
Para Asian Games 2023
Sri Lanka managed to win a total of 11 medals in the tournament, including the two gold medals won by Nuvan Indika in the men’s T44 100m event and Pradeep Somasiri in the men’s T46 1500m event, finishing 18th in the medal table.
- ඉතිහාසය අලුත් කළ 2022 මලල ක්රීඩා පිටිය
- ගෙවී ගිය 2022 වසරේ ජාත්යන්තර ක්රිකට් පිටිය පිළිබඳ පසු විපරමක්!
- ගෙවී ගිය 2022 වසරේ ශ්රී ලංකා ක්රිකට් කණ්ඩායමේ සොඳුරු මතකයන්
- තුෂාර සහ ඩිල්ශාන් මාලිංග සමඟින් එක් වෙද්දී, වනිඳු මුරලි ලඟට යයි!
International Sports Field
In the past year, world champions were selected in several sports events while focusing in the international sports fields.
Its beginning was marked by the Men’s Hockey World Cup held in India in January 2023. Germany managed to win the championship by winning the penalty kick against Belgium 5-4 in the final match.
After that, the 2022 FIFA Club World Cup final was held between Real Madrid and Al Hilal teams. The Real Madrid team managed to win the championship here for the 5th time in history.
Ireland then went on to win the Six Nations Rugby Championship held in February and March.
Although the Netball World Cup held in South Africa was not a good memory for Sri Lanka, Australia managed to maintain its continuous winning streak.
Australia managed to get a comfortable 61-45 victory over England in the World Cup final.
In the FIBA (Basketball) World Cup finals, Germany became the new world champions after a sharp 83-77 victory over Serbia. Here, the United States of America, the uncrowned king of the basketball world, was kicked out of the tournament.
Also, Spain managed to win the FIFA (Soccer) Women’s World Cup, which was hosted by Australia and New Zealand, and this was recorded as their first world championship. England won the runner-up in the tournament.
The 2023 Rugby World Cup was held in France last September and October. Here, the strongest pair of teams in the history of the Rugby World Cup qualified for the finals of the tournament, where South Africa won their fourth world championship with a sharp 12-11 victory over New Zealand. But later, some problem arose about this victory. However, South Africa are officially crowned world champions.
Meanwhile, the Manchester City team managed to win the 2023 FIFA Club World Cup which was held at the end of the year and it was recorded as their first Club World Cup victory. And with this victory, the 2023 season was recorded in history as one of the best seasons in the history of Manchester City.
The mark of athletics
In the past year, there were many athletes who showed outstanding performance in world athletics, but by the end of the year, Swedish pole vault champion Armand Duplantis and Kenyan long distance running champion Faith Kipyegon had the opportunity to become the Men’s athlete and Women’s athlete of the year respectively.
In addition, Noah Lyles and Sha’carri Richardson did a great job of making America the kings of the sprint this year.
In addition, many athletes such as Jacob Ingebrigtsen from Norway and Femke Bol from the Netherlands also managed to show outstanding performance in athletics last year.
However, this year was not so auspicious due to injuries to several athletes like Yupun Abeykoon, who Sri Lanka has hopes for at the world level, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of America, who won a notable name in world short distance running.
However, it can be assumed that all these stars will return to the track with the 2024 Olympics to be held in Paris next year.
Accordingly, the year 2023 ends, becoming one of the greatest years in the history of Sri Lankan athletics.
Over the past year, ThePapare.com has been responsible for bringing you all the sports news in Sri Lanka as well as in the international arena.
And in 2024, ThePapare.com is ready to bring you all the hot facts of the sports field at home and abroad, stay tuned with ThePapare.com.
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