June 13, Colombo (LNW): Aruna Darshana left the island on June 12 night to participate in an international athletics competition conducted by the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association (nacac), which will be held in the Bahamas on June 16.
The Nasu race track in the Bahamas, where this race is held, is the stadium where the World Relay Championship was held in recent days.
Aruna Darshana was also ready to participate in the relay championship with the Sri Lankan 400m relay team.
But due to the carelessness of the authorities, the relay team could not get visas on time.
This is a World Athletics “B” group (Silver label) competition and this competition is very important for Aruna who is currently close to Olympic qualification.
By the time he reports here, he will have points in the International Athletics Federation’s scorecard. In addition, from the first place to the 8th place, it is possible to get points as 100, 80, 70, 60, 55, 50, 45, 40 respectively.
48 athletes from around the world will be included in the 400m event of this year’s Olympics and currently Sri Lanka’s Kalinga Kumarage is 52nd and Aruna Darshan is 53rd.
In addition to this competition, the Athletics Association has also used another special opportunity for these two players to compete in Sri Lanka on June 30 for qualifying.
For that occasion, the Sri Lanka Athletics Association has worked to get the score chart of Group E approved by the International Athletics Federation.
Mr. Daminda Bandara will participate with Aruna as the manager and coach of this competition.
Along with this, the schedule of matches is also given. Nine hours and thirty minutes before the said time, the 400 meters event will start in Sri Lanka time.
*Adapted from original article, “වීසා නිසා සහය දිවීමේ සූරතාවලිය මඟ හැරුණු අරුණ, තනිව 400 දුවන්නට බහමාස් යයි” by Nishman Ranasinghe.
