Sri Lanka is gearing up with the best youth athletes to win and bring honour to the country at the Asian Youth Under-18 Athletic Championship 2025 that will be held in Dammam, Saudi Arabia from April 15 to 18.
Sri Lanka Athletics has listed about 30 talented youth athletes after conducted the first trial at Diyagama over last weekend. There were a few record breaking performances at this trial by some well established young athletes.
Rasara Wijesuriya the 10000m record holder
The best performance came from Rasara Wijesuriya of the Army who shattered a seven-year old in the Women’s 10,000m race.
She completed the race in 33:39.60s breaking the previous mark of 33:55.06 secs set by a former Olympian Hiruni Wijeratne set in 2018.
Another Olympian Sumeda Ranasinghe participating in the javelin throw produced another record breaking effort of 82.56m. This was recorded as the best by an athlete in an international event this year.
Giovanni Frattini of Italy had the previous best throw of 75.85m in the current season.
Another schoolboy in Shavindu Avishka of Dhammissara NS established a new national Under-18 record in the 400m race with a performance of 3:58.24s.
Lahiru Achintha from St. Aloysius’ College, Ratnapura also bettered the previous record in a time of 3:59.24s over the same distance. The previous record was 4:00.14s.
Meanwhile, up and coming athlete Lesandu Arthavidu equalled the Sri Lanka Under-20 high jump record with a performance of 2.18m. Manjula Kumara Wijesekara owned the record set in 2002.
With these kind of performances at the trials Sri Lanka can expect the youth athletes to bring more medals this time around also. (TBR)
