Sri Lankan athletes have a busy schedule next year and they are expected to take part in 13 International events including Asian Athletic Championship. The Athletic Association of Sri Lanka (AASL) is expected to conduct the 98th National Athletic Championship in December . and it will also be considered for the rankings and qualification said a senior official of the AASL. After reviewing the health situation in the country, the AASL hopes to conduct the Nationals at Mahinda Rajapaksha Stadium in Diyagama. Athletes practices and special training have already started after lock down period and especially this time more focus will be on the selected athletes who are in line for the qualifications at International events such as Asian Games and Olympics . National athletic coach Y.K Kularatne is busy with the athletes training while officials of the AASL are giving their maximum support to build up the athletes talents and are providing their requirements. Meanwhile AASL also hopes to make arrangements to conduct high altitude training for the selected athletes at Nuwara Eliya
Before the National Championship, the AASL plans to stage a selection trial meet for junior and senior athletes in October. This is in preparation for the 24th Asian Athletic Championship to be held from May 20 to 23 in Hangzhou, China and the 4th Asian Junior (Under 18) Championship to be held from March 11 to 14 in Kuwait next year in addition to other international competitions.
The new dates of the Tokyo Olympics will be 23rd July to 8th August. 2021 World Athletics (International Amateur Athletic Federation) has announced the period of Olympic qualification and consider athletes world ranking from last June. It is clearly noted that the period of 1st May 2019 to 5th April 2020 and 1st December 2020 to 29th June 2021 is considered for qualification.
In addition world athletics already stated the competitions which could be held from the period of 5th April 2020 to 1st December 2020 are not conside red for qualifications.National athletic championship is the highest ranking competition for athletes if it would be held before the 1st December the achievements and the highest bonus points couldn’t be obtained by the athletes .This is the main reason AASL is planning National championships for the benefit of the athletes qualifications.
Meanwhile AASL is considering inviting only the top eight ranked athletes for each event at the 98th National Athletic Championship. The aim of this proposal taken up at the recent Executive Committee meeting of the AASL is to improve the quality of some events and reduce the excess entries in other events. Since Olympic qualification has been extended from December 31 to June 2021 following the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, Sri Lanka’s National Athletic Championship will serve as a selection trial for international competitions. That means this years National athletic championship is very important for the athletes who are focussing on the next Olympics.
This will be the first time that the Nationals, which has been open to all previously, will be conducted for only selected athletes. In future, the Nationals will feature only the finalists with preliminary round being held earlier, if this year’s championship where only the top eight would be competing is successful. The top eight would be selected on their performances in the preliminary competitions.
Meanwhile the South Asian Games Gold medalists have already been included for the National pool training and National coach. Y.K Kularatne, two foreign coaches Daniel Rudeesha (Kenya) and Louis Mirandio(Cuba) are guiding these athletes during the special training programme. Kenyan coach will especially focus on middle distance runners while Cuban coach will focus on throwing events for athletes as specialist coaches.
Meanwhile the newly introduced World Ranking system for athletics has created confusion among the athletic fraternity in Sri Lanka, with some media even reporting that double South Asian Games Gold medal winner Nilani Ratnayake had qualified for 2020 Olympic Games, which will now be held in 2021.
A senior official of the AASL confirm that though Nilani is within the world top 45 eligible to compete at the Olympics as of now, those rankings are set to change drastically once competitions start after November and Nilani has a long road ahead to secure a qualification spot which will require her to compete in several championships which are ranked high in the world athletics competition list.
According to World Athletics, there will be 45 athletes eligible to compete in her pet event – the 3000m Steeplechase. Nilani who set a Sri Lanka record of nine minutes 46.76 seconds, finished fourth in the Asian Championship and sixth in the Asian Games, and is ranked 35th with 1180 points.
However so far none of the Sri Lankan athletes have got direct Olympic qualification. Hiruni Wijayaratne the champion marathoner who is training in USA and 3000m steeple chase runner Nilani Ratnayake who won two golds at SAG are tipped for Olympic qualification. Meanwhile javelin throw champion Sumedha Ranasinghe and triple jump record holder Vidusha Lakshani are also next in line for the Olympics from the second string qualification list.
Sri Lankan middle distance runners Nimali Liyanarachci and Gayanthika Abeyratne have also worked hard while 4X400 relay teams also have a good chance of qualifying with their present improvement of the timing at the Asian level.
0 comments:
Post a Comment