Shreshan, Sarangi, Two Others to Get Scholarships

Two jumpers, Sarangi Silva and Shreshan Dhananjaya, together with two other athletes to be selected, will receive overseas training scholarships after their impressive performance at the recently concluded 98th National Athletics Championship 2020.

Shreshan and Sarangi will receive six months training scholarship in Qatar provided by the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOCSL), while the other two athletes will be selected by the High-Performance Committee of the Sports Ministry.

23-year-old Shreshan hailing from St. Joseph Vaz College Wennappuwa, excelled in both the Long Jump and Triple Jump during the National Championship, winning Gold in the Long Jump with a performance of 7.71m into headwind of -2.7m/z, and Silver in the Triple Jump with a leap of 16.12m.

Coached by Chaminda Weerasinghe, Dhananjaya broke the National record in the Triple Jump with a leap of 16.71 metres at the first selection trial in February last year, and was selected to represent Sri Lanka at the Asian Championship. He is presently ranked sixth in Asia and 49th in the World. In the Long Jump he is ranked 73rd in the world.

24-year-old Sarangi hailing from Sri Sumangala BV Panadura leapt 6.33m – a new meet record – to win the women’s Long Jump event during the National Championship. The promising jumper is trained by Y.K.Kularathne and won two Gold medals last year at the South Asian Games, leaping a personal best of 6.38m in the Long Jump, while also helping the Sri Lanka women’s 4x100m Relay team to win the Gold medal running the second lap.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka Athletics (SLA) has provided all results with their input to the Sports Ministry’s High-Performance Committee appointed by Minister Namal Rajapaksa, in order to select two athletes for overseas scholarships to be funded by the Ministry of Sports.

SLA has also sought the High-Performance Committee’s permission to form another athletics pool for those who marginally missed out from the National Pool. Many athletes, including SAG Gold medalists and Asian Championship medalists, missed out from the National Pool mainly due to lack of training during COVID-19, despite them winning medals for the country when it mattered most.

SLA had pointed out that even though many of these athletes missed out from the National pool due to tough qualification standards (which SLA prepared for the Asian Championship) they are better than many National athletes in other sports who now stand to benefit from the Ministry despite failing to win at least a SAG Bronze medal.

Sri Lanka Athletics team won 15 Gold, 12 Silver and 8 Bronze medals during the 2019 South Asian Games beating India in Athletics. Athletics is also Sri Lanka’s best performing sport in the International arena, especially in multi-sports events, with the country’s two Olympic medals and all Asian Games Gold medals coming from athletics.