SL in to relay finals
The Sri Lanka men’s 4x400m relay quartette advanced to the finals to keep the medal hopes alive. This was in spite of their performance in the heats not being so impressive, at the Asian Games in Jakarta .
Sri Lanka once again ran from the outer lane seven with no one in lane eight and yet finished second in their heat in a time of 3 minutes 06.66 seconds.
Sri Lanka’s top quarter milers Aruna Darshana who had won the Asian Junior Gold medal earlier in 45.78 seconds, was nowhere close to that performance as his disappointing outings at the Asian Games continued with a mediocre first lap which handed over a huge lead to Qatar. In fairness, Qatar’s first lap was run by their 400m hurdler, Abderrahman Samba and it seems Samba’s presence played in the mind of Darshana who seemed shocked even before the lap began.
Ajith Premakumara who ran the second lap had to run with some of the fastest runners in the 400m individual event and had no chance of catching them up and reduce the gap. Youngster Pasindu Kodikara and experienced Kalinga Kumarage did relatively well to secure the automatic qualification spot.
But it will be a hectic ask for Sri Lanka today to fight for a medal along with African athletes of Qatar and Bahrain. India will have their two individual 400m runners Mohommad Anas and Arokia Rajiv coming in to finals as they were rested during the heats.
The Islanders ranked fifth in the finals behind Qatar, Bahrain, India and Japan and will compete in the seventh lane at 7.10pm SL time. This will be the last opportunity Sri Lanka has to secure a medal in track and field at the Asian Games 2018 and if they fail it will be the third consecutive Games where they will be without medal for their athletics.
Sri Lanka do have a faster and more experienced runner in Dilip Ruwan who is with the team as a reserve athlete and has the option of running in the finals. Ruwan finished fifth at the trials due to unfortunate circumstances, but, now he is back in good form. Sri Lanka normally conduct relay trials during major tours but there was no trial here for Dilip to prove his worth and it will be unwise to run the relay without such a capable athlete in the team.
In the other athletics events of the day Bahrain’s African athlete Edidiong Oding completed the sprint double winning the 200m with a time of 22.96 seconds while India’s Dutee Chand clinched another Silver with 23.20 seconds. Japanese Seito Yamamoto leapt to a new Asian Games record of 5.70m winning the Gold medal in the Pole Vault event. India clinched another Gold medal as Aprinder Singh won the triple jump with leap of 16.77m. Eshan Hadadi of Iran won the discus throw with throw of 65.71m.
Indian Iron Girl Swapna Barman won the Heptathlon with total of 6026 points while Japanese Seito Yamamoto won the 200m after a tape finish.
With one day to go in the competition China leads the medal tally with nine Gold medals followed by Bahrain with 8 and India 5.
Meanwhile Rugby sevens will start today and Sri Lanka will take on UAE followed by South Korea. SL hockey team will play for the 7th position against Oman while their Volleyball team will take on Nepal.
