The 22-year-old Sri Lanka’s ace Javelin Thrower Rumesh Tharanga created history by securing the seventh place at the 20th World Athletics Championships Men’s Javelin Throw event final, which was held in Tokyo recently.
The talented rising prodigy managed to throw his best throw of 84.38 m on his first attempt, and his initial performance was good enough to seal him the 7th place in the Final. Gaining 7th place at a World Championship is not only an individual achievement for Rumash, but also a historical milestone for Sri Lankan athletics. However, the national record holder in the Men’s Javelin Throw failed to clear the distance of 86.50 metres that he cleared at the 1st Indian Open World Athletics Bronze Level Continental Tour Meet, which was held at the Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar, India.
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In this star-studded event, Keshorn Walcott of Trinidad & Tobago clinched a Gold with an 87.83-metre performance. He was closely contested by another Caribbean nationalist, Anderson Peters of Grenada, who took Silver with a distance of 87.38 metres. The Bronze medal went to Curtis Thompson, the reputed athlete from the USA, for a performance of 86.67 metres.
Most importantly, Rumesh managed to beat the Olympic and world champion from India, Neeraj Chopra (84.03 m), and Pakistan’s Olympic medallist Arshad Nadeem (82.75 m), who were placed 8th and 10th respectively. However, Rumesh failed to surpass the performance of the Indian athlete, Sachin Yadav, who delivered his seasonal best throw of 86.27 metres to secure the 4th position.
This was the first appearance for Rumesh at the prestigious global stage of World Athletics, and he came up with a remarkable performance to become the first Sri Lankan male athlete to reach a World Championship Final. Sri Lanka’s only medal success in the World Championship Athletic Tournament came when blistering sprinting queen Susanthika Jayasinghe took a silver in Athens at the 2007 meet.
Rumesh started his sporting career as a fast-bowling Cricketer at his alma mater, St Peter’s College Bambalapitiya, and later transformed into a Javelin Thrower with the influence of his father. Currently he is training at the Queensland Institute of Sport, where he is refining his techniques and fine-tuning his talents to deliver some bigger throws in the near future, to hopefully bring more glory to the small island nation.
Apart from Rumesh, the army athlete and ex-Javelin national record holder Sumedha Ranasinghe, as well as the sprinting star Nadeesha Ramanayake, were also featured in the Tokyo World Athletics Championships, but unfortunately failed to proceed beyond the preliminary rounds.
