SL hopes at World Juniors now pin on 4x400M relays
Sri Lanka hopes at the IAAF World Junior championship will now pin on two relay teams as both boys and girls 4x400m relay team will compete in their heats tomorrow (13th ) at Tampere, Finland.
Men’s 4x400m relay team which comprise the 400m sensation Aruna Darshana , Pasindu Kodikara , Ravishka Indrajith and Pabasara Niku will compete in their heats at 3pm in the heat three which includes Canada , USA and France , all three who has better time than SL in the relay . In Fact both Canada and USA had multiple sub 46 seconds runners in this championship where SL will have do really well to get in to finals.
SL team won the gold with ease in both Asian Juniors and South Asian Juniors while SL poses sub 46 runner in Aruna and sub 47 seconds runner in Pasindu Kodikara .Both Pabasara Niku and Ravishka Indrajith had clocked sub 48 seconds in 400m and all four quarter milers had qualified for the world juniors in individual 400m even though they did not take part in the event focusing on the relay .
Pasindu Kodikara will start the relay for SL followed by Raishka Indrajith in the second lap ,Pabasara Niku in the third and Aruna in the anchor leg.
Women’s team who won the bronze medal in Asian Juniors and Gold medal in South Asian Juniors includes Dilshi Kumarasinghe , Romeshi Attidiya , Sachini Divyanjali and Amasha de Silva . But here at the World Championship ,400m specialist Sandumini Chaviprabhavi Bandara set to run the relay instead of Amasha as she focused on 100m going to world championship.
nevertheless as for the Team manager , GLS Perera both Sachini and Sandumini was suffering from fever today (Friday) and team is waiting till Saturday before decide on relay laps.
They will compete in the heat two at 2.28 pm along with Asian Champions Japan, Silver medalist , India and likes of Australia , Canada, and Ukrain where if SL team comes to the final it will be like winning the gold for them .
AASL wanted to conduct relay trials to finalize relay lapses prior to going in to Finland but religious activities at Sugathadasa stadium prevent them from holding the trials and AASL is basing relay lapses on the performance of last April’s Junior nationals . But athlete who performed will in Junior Nationals well and got in to relay teams seems had slight slip in their performances which was visible during both South Asian and Asian Juniors but no trials mean there’s no way exactly to find out whether the reserve athletes is actually better than some relay members who couldn’t do well in Japan .
“We had a coaches meeting this morning and unanimously decided to run a same gold medal winning team” said Team Manager GLS Perera confirming that there’s no trial going in to the relay .
