Chaminda and Christine to run for Sri Lanka at World’s biggest Athletic event

• 
• 

Details

Category: athletics

Published on Thursday, 25 August 2011 14:06

Written by Charit Tissera

Hits: 1487

Chaminda Wijekoon and Christine Merrill, two noticeable sprinters in the Sri Lankan athletic arena will be representing the island nation at the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) World Championships, which is scheduled to be worked off from August 26 to September 04 in Daegu, Korea.

Both Chaminda and Christine are participating in this event as wild card entries as they failed to meet the qualifying standards during the events held at the Asian Championships in Japan (July 2011). However, the duo managed to make their marks towards the Bronze medals in their events in Kobe, which eventually became the closest qualification for them to take part in IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

Chaminda Wijekoon and Christine Merrill are medal winning performers in their respective events, Men’s 1500m and Women’s 400m hurdles. Wijekoon is tipped as a customary medal winner in many of the Asian region events. Merrill has been showing impressive levels of timing, during the past several months, in her event.

It is learnt that Merrill is to participate in her heats race on the 29th approximately at 8.50 hours (local time) while Wijekoon would take to the tracks on the 30th at around 7.50 hours (LT).

The USA currently tops the medals table in All Time IAAF competitions with 250 medals (Gold, Silver and Bronze combination), followed by Russia with 133 medals and Kenya with 83 medals, respectively.

Sri Lanka holds the 68th position in the medal rankings, owing to the Silver medal clinched by Lankan sprint queen Susanthika Jayasinghe in Athens (1997) in her 200m event, along with the Bronze medal she settled in for, in Osaka (2007).

However, India, which fields the highest number of athletes (08) from South Asia, for this year’s IAAF World Championships, currently lies at the 81st position, with only one Bronze, in their deck.

Among the other South Asian countries are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan with one athlete each, Maldives with two athletes and Nepal fielding in no athletes for the event.

IAAF World Championships, which is tagged as the biggest ever Track and Field event, even ahead of Olympics, holds higher significance to the athletes, along with the track and field fraternities. This year’s event is to attract 1945 athletes from 201 countries.

We, at ThePapare.com along with thousands of Sri Lankan sports fans in and around Sri Lanka would like to wish best of luck to both Chaminda and Christine, in their events.

• < Prev
• Next >