• SL elite athletes also in the fray 

South Asia’s fastest man Yupun Abeykoon, who is set to compete in a few regional meets across Europe shortly, will strive to reach the qualifying standard to feature in the Paris Olympics, The Sunday Morning Sports learns.

If the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bronze medalist fails to reach the required standard for the Summer Games at these European meets, it will force him to compete at the Sri Lanka Athletics (SLA) Nationals in Colombo late next month to be in with a shout for the marquee quadrennial event, it is learnt.

Abeykoon, who clocked 10.18 seconds and secured third place in the men’s 100 m at the recent Dubai Grand Prix meet in the UAE, missed out on making the Olympic cut which stood at 10 s.

However, sources from Sri Lanka Athletics expressed confidence that the gifted sprinter would be among the elite local athletes to qualify for the upcoming Paris Games.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka will also bank on three of its elite pool athletes making it to the Olympics when they take part at the 11th Michitaka Kinami Memorial Athletics Meet in Osaka, Japan today (12).

The three sprinters will be Tharushi Karunarathna (800 m women), Nadeesha Ramanayake (400 m women), and Kalinga Kumarage (400 m men), respectively.

Following the meet in Osaka, Kumarage is set to participate in another meet in Japan, the Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Tokyo on 19 May, SLA sources confirmed.

The contingent of the country’s elite athletes, comprising Aruna Darshana, Kalinga Kumarage, Sumeda Ranasinghe, Tharushi Karunarathna, Nadeesha Ramanayake, Dilhani Lekamge, and Gayanthika Abeyratne are slated to compete in at least six international meets before mid next month, as they continue their quest for an Olympic berth.