94th National Athletic championship Day 02 ; Manjula given another life line

Ajith Karunathilake the reigning decathlon champion of the Sri Lanka Army stole the lime light establishing a new national record at the conclusion of the second day of the National Athletic Championship 2016.

Karunathilake bettered his own record in the Decathlon amassing 6724 total points and was given a good fight by Airmen KDS Perera who was close behind Karunathilake with 6670 points claiming the second spot.

Ruwan Kumara turned a lot of heads when he became the new national champion clocking 47.20 Secs outrunning a number of favorites in the Men’s 400M final. Himesh Eshan defended his 100M national sprint crown but was kept on his toes by his Army team mate Mohammad Ashrof who was only behind by fractions of seconds.

Manjula narrowly misses Olympic qualification

In Women’s Javelin throw Nadeesha Dilhani out threw the favorite Nadeeka Lakmali to become the new National champion.

In an interesting turn of events we reliably learn that Sri Lanka’s ace High Jumper Manjula  Kumara will be given another opportunity to achieve Olympic qualification standards of 2.29M tomorrow along with 03 other competitors. Kumara won the High jump event yesterday but  only managed to clear a height of 2.49M and was displeased at the lack of tournaments and competitions held for the local athletes in the run up to the Olympics.

Photo Album – 94th National Athletics Championship 2016 – Day 1

09 Men’s finals and 08 Women’s finals were concluded today with a host of qualification rounds wrapping up setting up for an entreating third and final day show down.

Results of all concluded events so far at the National Athletic Championships 2016 :