Sachini shatters national pole vault record again 

Sri Lanka Signals Corps athlete Sachini Kaushalya improved her own Sri Lanka national record with a leap of 3.60 metres to win the women’s pole vault title as records continued to fall on day two of the Sri Lanka Army Athletics Championships at the Sugathadasa Stadium on Tuesday.

Kaushalya broke her own record of 3.57 metres which she established at last month’s second leg of the National Championships. In the corresponding men’s event K. Puvitharan and S.E. Janith both cleared five metres to improve the meet record.

Thrower Shanika Manoji Amarasinghe created a new meet record in the women’s hammer throw as she cleared a distance of 44.97 metres. Women’s Corps ‘A’ team athlete was five metres ahead of her closest rival. In the men’s hammer throw W.G.S.R. Kumarasiri (SLASC – 49.51m) was the winner.

In the much looked forward to javelin throw, Olympian Sumedha Ranasinghe survived a closely contested battle as he hurled the javelin to a distance of 75.91 metres in his final attempt to edge out Pragathi Ranawaka (75.24m) who lead the field in his penultimate throw. Former national record holder Waruna Dayaratne settled for the third place with a throw of 73.15 metres.

Nilani Ratnayake gave the second day a decent start. She was in her usual best in the women’s 3000 metres steeplechase. Women’s Corps ‘A’ team member who missed Olympic participation narrowly early this year, finished the grueling event in a time of 10:08.09 seconds. She was more than a minute ahead of second placed M.P. Herath.

Rashmi Nirodha equaled her personal best with a jump of 12.64 metres to beat Randi Cooray to the second place in the women’s triple jump. Cooray had a feat of 12.53 metres as her best jump of the day. However, Cooray had little contest in the high jump as she was a lone contestant above the 1.58 metres mark. She won gold for a feat of 1.65 metres.

In another closely contested affair SLEME’s Shreshan Dananjaya cleared a distance of 7.64 metres to win the men’s long jump. The silver went to Wimalasiri whose best leap was just three centimeters behind Dananjaya’s winning mark.

 H.M.S.R. Herath (SLASC- 49:08.26 secs) and P.B. Gayani (SLAWC ‘A’ – 53:49.13 secs) were the winners of the men’s and women’s 10,000 metres race walk events respectively. (RF)