Navodya wins bronze as SL finish with two medals

Hurdler Navodya Sankalpa from Mahinda College Galle clinched the bronze medal in the 400m hurdle, as Sri Lanka finished with a silver and bronze at the second Asian Youth Athletics Championship concluded at Bangkok tuesday.

The youngster who trains under Piyal Weerasekera clocked 53.86 seconds. The race was won by Halomoan Edwin Bisar of Indonesia with a time of 51.96 seconds, while Ting Hsuan Huang finished second in 52.49 seconds.

Navodya is already qualified to run at the IAAF World Youth Championship and Commonwealth Youth Games, but since both events are due to take place in July within a space of two days, he has opted to compete at the Commonwealth Youth Games. Ceylon Today highlighted this on 4 May in an article titled “Scheduling mishaps by World Bodies leave youth athletes in quandary”.

Sprinter Shalika Santhush Weerasinghe was unfortunate to miss out from the podium when he finished fourth with another personal best timing of 21.92 seconds in the 200m. Minkyu Shin of Korea won the gold medal with a time of 21.48 seconds, while home favourites Sittiphon Donpritee and Suriya Taemchan finished second and third in 21.69 and 21.86 seconds respectively.

Sachini Divyanjali finished eighth in the 200m finals with 25.54 seconds, while Javelin thrower Charuka Rukshan finished 9th with 58.35m.

Nevertheless, SL camp ended up in disappointment as their prime gold medal hope Asmika Herath was deprived from competing in the 2000m St.Ch due to an official blunder.

China finished first in the medals tally with 16 gold medals followed by Chinese Taipei with Six golds, while India finished third with five golds. Sri Lanka finished in 17th position.

A total of 18 new meet records were set during the four day championship.