Official blunder affects Nilani’s Olympic Chances
An official blunder at the National Athletics trials affected Nilani’s chances of gaining higher points in the World Athletics ranking, which will subsequently affect her chances of participating at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Nilani is the only Sri Lankan athlete who is within Olympic qualification as she is 35th in the Olympic qualification list in the Women’s 3000m steeplechase. World Athletics will select the top 45 runners for the event.
Nilani needed to better her time to gain higher World Athletics points to further increase her chances of qualifying for the Olympics, but her performance was hampered as officials had mistakenly increased the height of all five steeples (instead of the normal height), which she had to clear during the event.
Over the 7 and a half rounds she had to clear the steeples 45 times during the event, where she and her coach conveyed their strong displeasure over the incident.
