Lankan athletes Sarangi, Sumedha fall short in finals

Sri Lankan athletes Sarangi Silva and Sumedha Ranasinghe ended their Commonwealth Games campaign while losing their respective finals on the penultimate day of the event in Birmingham, England on Sunday.

Sarangi was nowhere near her usual best in the Women’s long jump final as her best performance was marked as 6.07m which was way below her personal best of 6.65m.

Sarangi was placed at 12th position in the final where Ese Brume of Nigeria won the Gold Medal with an outstanding performance and a Games record of 7.00m.

Earlier, Sarangi had leapt 6.42m in the qualifying round, which led her to reach the final but unfortunately, she couldn’t repeat that performance in the final.

Meanwhile, veteran javelin thrower Ranasinghe also failed to find his best form in the final as he had to settle for 10th place with a best throw of 70.77m.

Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem produced a Games record to win the Gold Medal with an effort of 90.18m ahead of 2022 World Champion Anderson Peters and former World Champion Julius Yego. Susil Premalal reporting from Birmingham