Hosts
Sri Lanka field strong squad for Asian Championships
Dinesh
Weerawansa for IAAF
4 August 2002 - Colombo, Sri Lanka -The Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka is
gearing up to host its biggest ever sporting event this week. Forty-three
countries will field teams with a total of nearly 900 athletes at the 14th Asian
Athletic Championships in the capital, Colombo from 8 to 12 August.
A new Rekortan 400m competition track and a 200m training track have been laid down at the venue for the Asian athletic extravaganza at Sugathadasa Stadium, Colombo, the country's main track & field stadium.
The Government of Sri Lanka has given its fullest support to host the meet, pumping 200 million Rupees (over 1.1 million USD), despite country's struggling economy with a huge budget deficit.
Chairman of the Organising Committee of the 14th Asian Championship, Johnston Fernando, who is also the host nation's Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports, said all arrangements have been finalised so as to be able host the meeting on a grand scale.
The organizing committee has been struggling hard to make the infrastructure development needed to host the championship in the short time that has elapsed since last year's General elections in Sri Lanka. But finally, they have been successful in meeting the challenge and Sugathadasa Stadium is now ready to host the Asian Championship, the biggest-ever sporting event to be held in the island and the first since the seven-nation South Asian Federation (SAF) Games back in 1991.
Colombo, one of South Asia's leading cities, will be the centre of attraction amongst Asians as the cream of athletes in the region, including several world medallists, vie for honours at the Asian Athletic Championship which begins here on Thursday (8 August). Of the 44 member countries of the Asian Amateur Athletic Association, 43 countries will be seen in action. Afghanistan will not field a team as their membership has been suspended.
The upcoming Asian Championship will also be an ideal testing for the athletes in the region before the 14th Asian Games to be held in South Korean city of Busan, in two months time. Fresh after the recent three-leg Asian Grand Prix series in Hyderabad, Manila and Bangkok, many top Asian athletes are in good form and it is expected that several new records could well be established in Colombo.
Carrying the host nation's medal hopes will be Olympic medallist Susanthika Jayasinghe. At 26 years, Jayasinghe has been the country's leading woman athlete during the past decade. She is Sri Lanka's best bet for a gold medal and will compete in women's 100m, 200m and 4 x 100m relay.
Jayasinghe has been the country's most successful athlete ever, winning women's 200m silver medal at the 1997 IAAF World Championships in Athens and a bronze medal in the same event at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Last week, she narrowly missed a medal at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, finishing fourth just one hundredth of a second behind bronze medallist Sevethada Fynes of Bahamas in the women's 100m.
Jayasinghe's 11.08 in the final was her season's best performance and is an indication of her good form ahead of the Asian Championships.
The women's 200m has been Jayasinghe's pet event and she held the No.3 position in the IAAF World Rankings until the end last year.
Asian athletics is generally dominated by athletes from China, Japan, Kazakhstan, India and Thailand and Sri Lanka's best performance at regional level was in 1991 when Colombo hosted the 5th South Asian Federation Games, with Sri Lanka winning 14 athletics gold medals. Since then, the island nation, better known in the sporting arena as the 1996 World Cricket Champions, has produced several track stars including Jayasinghe, Sriyani Kulawansa the Commonwealth Games silver medallist and Asian Games gold medallist, Sugath Tillakaratne the Commonwealth Games bronze medallist, Damayanthi Darsha the Asian Games double gold medallist and record holder for the women's 200m and 400m, and Rohan Pradeep Kumara the Asian championship double gold medallist.
Sri Lanka will be fielding its largest ever contingent in Asian Championship history, numbering 105 athletes. As the hosts, Sri Lanka will field three athletes in each event and will compete in all events of the championship programme. Japan and China are set to pose the biggest threat in the track events while India should take a major share of the medals in the field events.