Youth athletes to scale new heights to qualify for Asian event

Sir John Tarbet Senior Athletics Championships

by Reemus Fernando

Sri Lanka Athletics has introduced tough qualifying standards to pick a team for the upcoming Asian Youth Athletics Championships which will be held in Kuwait in October.

Youth athletes aspiring to qualify for the biennial event will get the final opportunity to impress selectors when the Sri Lanka Schools Athletics Association conducts their premier event, the Sir John Tarbet Senior Athletics Championships in September.

The Asian Youth Championships is the only Asian event where Sri Lanka has won medals at every edition. Sri Lanka won three medals when the event was last held in Hong Kong in 2019.

A senior official of Sri Lanka Athletics said that the governing body has considered both the average bronze winning performance of the last three editions and Asia’s eighth best performance in this age category in each event during 2021 before setting up qualifying standards.

It is the first time that Sri Lanka Athletics has published qualifying standards for a youth event.

“We want to set the record straight,” Saman Kumara, Sri Lanka Athletics statistician told The Island.

“Generally it is the average bronze winning standard that we consider for selection. But this time we considered the other factors as well as the youth athletes are returning after a two year break due to Covid 19 pandemic.”

He said that in the event of athletes not reaching the set qualifying standards the team would be selected giving prominence to athletes who were the closest to the standards.

Sri Lanka has won a total of nine medals including a gold medal during the last three editions of the championships where some of Sri Lanka’s present champions gained their first competitive international exposure.

Current national 110 metres hurdles champion Roshan Ranatunga and leading triple jumper Chamal Kumarasiri both won silver medals when the event was first held in 2015.

Sri Lanka has won most of the medals at these championships in girls’ and boys’ 400 metres hurdles.

The country won three medals when the event was last held in Hong Kong in 2019. St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa sprinter Navishka Sandesh in the boys’ 400 metres and Kandy hurdler Amesha Hettiarachchi in the girls’ 400 metres hurdles won a silver and a bronze respectively while the country’s relay team clinched a silver medal in the medley relay.

Sri Lanka has received nine quota places for athletes and two for officials from the event organizers for the October event.

The Sir John Tarbet Senior Athletics Championship, the final selection event for the Asian Youth Athletics Championships will be held from September 14 to 16.