Kalinga wins gold with personal best

Sprinter Kalinga Kumarage produced his personal best in winning the men’s 400 metres gold medal on day four of the 60th Interstate Athletics Championship in Patiala, India on Monday.

Competing in lane three, Kumarage led from the start and returned a time of 45.73 seconds to win the first gold medal for Sri Lanka at this championship. Country won a silver medal when Amasha de Silva was placed second in the women’s 100 metres on Sunday. Lakshika Sugandi won bronze in the women’s 100 metres hurdles.

Sri Lanka Athletics confirmed Kumarage as the fourth fastest 400 metres sprinter in history following his stunning feat yesterday and it was also the fastest time by a Sri Lankan since 2018.

Only the national record holder Sugath Thilakaratne and former champions Prasanna Amarasekara and Rohan Pradeep Kumara have been faster than Kumarage.

Kumarage, served a temporary suspension after testing positive for a banned substance in 2018 but was cleared by disciplinary panel later in 2019. By August 2018, Kumarage had clocked 45.99 seconds in Jakartha and was beginning a healthy rivalry with newly crowned Asian Junior Champion Aruna Dharshana, who was the fourth fastest Sri Lankan over the distance following the latter’s remarkable rise that year.

However, the suspension dealt a severe blow to Kumarage’s Olympic aspirations as he missed number of local and international competitions including the Asian Championship that year. With the World Athletics’ ranking system taking effect it needed athletes to be ranked among the best in the world to earn Tokyo Olympic entry. But lack of competitions meant that he was still the second ranked athlete in Sri Lanka behind Dharshana.

Kumarage’s performance yesterday was a relief for athletics authorities who backed him ahead of Dharshana for the Indian event. Some of India’s best sprinters were not competing yesterday as they were preparing for today’s 4×400 metres.

Kumarage is set to compete in the men’s 200 metres final today after emerging as the fastest from the heats.

Meanwhile, in the women’s 400 metres, Nadeesha Ramanayake returned a time of 54.37 seconds to finish fifth.

Today is the final day of the Interstate Championship and it will be crucial for Nilani Ratnayake who is fighting to retain her world rankings to qualify for Olympics. The steeplechase runner had slipped to the 42nd position in the ‘Road to Olympic Rankings and she will compete to produce a time that will secure a position among the first 45 athletes to secure her ticket to Tokyo.

Rio Olympic participant Sumeda Ranasinghe too is set to compete today. It will be a tough ask for him to climb six places up from 45th position to be ranked among the top 32 athletes in the world to secure a place.

Young Medhani Jayamanne is set to compete in the women’s 200 metres with an eye on the World Junior Championship qualifying mark.

The women’s 4×100 metres team too will compete in the final.

Sri Lanka Athletics sent a ten member team to Patiala on their Indian counterparts’ invitation to provide an eleventh hour opportunity for the competition starved athletes to strive for Olympic qualification. Today is the final day of the Olympic qualifying period.