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Javelin thrower Rumesh Tharanga stunned the arena with his very first attempt as he shattered the national record with 86.50m throw and achieved World Championship qualification (85.50m) at the 1st Indian Open Athletics Championship, a World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze-level event held at Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar, India.
Tharanga won the gold medal and erased the national record of 85.78m set by Sumedha Ranasinghe earlier this year. Ranasinghe also finished third in the event with a mark of 80.65m.
The duo will be traveling to Tokyo for the World Championship, marking the first instance where Sri Lanka has had two javelin throwers qualify for a world event—both by achieving the direct qualification standard.
Rumesh’s throw stands as the 9th best in the world this year. He was already within the cut-off places (top 36) for the World Championship before the event, but this mark has now secured his ticket outright, regardless of his final world ranking position.
The 22-year-old former Peterite has recorded seven throws over the 80m mark just this year. His personal best of 85.45m, set last year, had narrowly missed earning him qualification for the Paris Olympics.
In the other events of the day, sprinter Chamod Yodasinghe and javelin thrower Dilhani Lekamge secured silver medals in the men’s 100m and women’s javelin respectively.
The men’s 100m final was marred by multiple interruptions due to false starts and crowd noise from the packed stadium. Despite the challenging conditions, Yodasinghe delivered a strong performance, clocking 10.43 seconds to finish second.
Lekamge threw a modest 54.96m, short of her personal best of 61.57m.
In other events, 400m runner Nishendra Fernando placed 6th, recording a time of 54.49 seconds.
