The Athletics Association of Sri Lanka (AASL) will begin their preparations for next year’s Olympics and Asian Championships with a residential training camp from July 4 in Nuwara Eliya.
“The 26-member Sri Lanka Athletics Pool will go through a six-month training programme in Nuwara Eliya under the guidance of their respective coaches,” a top official of the AASL told the Daily News yesterday.
“We went through an observation tour to Nuwara Eliya last week and after an assessment of the conditions, we thought it was the ideal location for the athletes to train,” he added.
“Our panel of coaches also felt that the athletes need to train at a high-altitude location and accordingly, they will leave for Nuwara Eliya in a couple of days,” the source added further.
The athletics calendar for 2021 would commence with the 15th Asian Cross-Country Championships scheduled for February in Hong Kong.
This will be followed by the 18th Asian Marathon Championship which will be worked off in Thailand. The 4th Asian Youth (Under-18) Athletics Championships will be held in Kuwait in March, followed by the 21st Asian 20km Race Walking Meet in Japan.
In addition, the Asian Relay Championships will be staged on April 3 and 4 in Thailand. The glamour event in the Asian athletics calendar, the 24th Asian Athletics Championships, will be held from May 20 to 23 in Hangzhou, China.
Thereafter, the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games will be worked off from May 27 to 29 in Thailand.
The Mokpo International Throws Meeting will be held in September in South Korea, while the 3rd Asian Youth Games (athletics) will be staged from November 24 to 27 in Shantou, China.
Meanwhile, the AASL is also planning to send a total of eight athletes for the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.
“None of our athletes have qualified for the Olympics. But since the Tokyo Games got postponed to next year because of the Coronavirus pandemic, we still have a chance of qualifying,” the source pointed out.
As the Olympics have been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the IAAF is set to conduct the qualifying events from December 30 to July 19.
Nearly 1,900 athletes have already obtained qualifications for the Olympics, although athletes from some of the other countries have not qualified yet.
It is believed that at least one male and female athlete would be handed a chance for Olympic representation from the nations which fail to qualify.
0 comments:
Post a Comment