33rd Annual Mercantile Athletics Championship 2016

1162
Mercentile Athletics

The most prestigious athletics event in the mercantile calendar, the Annual Mercantile Athletics Meet is just around the corner for the 33rd occasion. The meet will be held on the 19th, 20th and 21st of August at the Mahinda Rajapakse Sports Complex in Diyagama.

The organization is quite pleased with this year’s participation with 2000 athletes already confirming participation from 50 different firms. Teams from India are also expected to partake this year and the competition is expected to be escalated to a new level.

Foreign participation in this event will in return create possible financial and career opportunities for talented yet struggling athletes in the country. This was a key point brought forward by the Secretary of the Mercantile Athletics Federation Mr. Tornado Jayasundara, who went on to encourage the present print and online media personnel to publicize the event to their top potential so that national athletes will get better career opportunities for a stable future.

Improvements of great heights can be seen from the past years with just 747 players participating in the 2007 meet and as mentioned before, over 2000 participating this year. The organization went on to say that they are always looking for better ways to improve participation in this meet for years to come.

This year’s meet will have 8 different age categories for both Men and Women including the Over 55 Women’s age group, which was canceled off last year due to lack of participation.

Only competitors whose private companies are members of the MAF can take part in this meet and an annual fee of Rs. 15,000/- is charged as membership from each firm. There will be track and field events along with walking events in both individual and team competitions, and the top 7 point scoring companies will be anounced on the third and final day.

Making things interesting, 18 challenge trophies will be awarded for certain events for best performance. There will be no cash prices for any winning team as the federation sees this meet as more of an opportunity growth than monetary rewards.

The 2015 championship went to the Sri Lanka Telecom Athletics Team with Sri Lanka Air Lines coming in second and Sampath Bank placing third.