US based Sri Lankan athlete Ushan Thiwanka once again stole the limelight when he won the Men’s high jump event at the NCAA Division Two Meet in Michigan.
He was able to leap 2.17m but that was not his best compared to his recent performances. The wind speed and the day's temperature was very low with a 7.C effect for his performance on this day. The 23-year-old, who studies at the Texas A&M University-Commerce, earlier broke the Sri Lanka Indoor record with a 2.25m leap in February.
In March, he broke the 16-year-old Sri Lanka national high jump record by leaping 2.28m at the Texas Relay Championship.
Then after another month he broke the South Asian record in the event with a 2.30m leap, which is the best performance by a Sri Lankan in the athletics field for more than a decade. At the moment he is joint seventh best jumper in the world. However, with the introduction of the new qualification standards for the Tokyo Olympics, he will either have to jump the 2.33m for direct qualification mark or drastically improve his world ranking position. (D.R)
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