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Athletes sweat it out as starter delays to whistle
Monday, 11 July 2005 - 8:32 AM SL Time
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The athletes faced a great health risk on Saturday as they were forced to tally for hours in the middle of the grounds for their respective events due to a major delay in conducting scheduled events during the penultimate day of the Junior National Athletic Championships at Sugathadasa Stadium.
A total of eleven 100m heats in both men`s and women`s categories were scheduled to be completed within a period of one hour after commencing at 1.30 p.m. Instead, they dragged on for nearly three-and-a-half hours, forcing young athletes to sweat under a blazing sun.
`They are risking the future of these young athletes,` a coach complained. `They should have started the events as soon as they were called out. But it did not happen here for reasons best known to the organisers.
`We had to wait for several hours before we got our chance to run,` a disappointed young athlete said. `We warmed up before the event to get ourselves prepared for the race. By the time we got to run, we were desperate.`
Fielding questions from the Sunday Island, an official admitted to the delay but said that it had happened to the large number of entries for the events. An excess of 3500 athletes are taking part in the three day meet.
`Well, there was an unavoidable `slight` delay,` he admitted.
However, some are on the view that organisers should have used both sides of the track or at least the warming-up track on the left to conduct the races of age groups 12, 14, and 16.
`It was an avoidable delay had they used their brains a bit,` the coach criticised.
Meanwhile seven meet records were lowered during the second day`s action with the biggest improvement from Chamila Nishan in the Under-23 men`s 5000m. Junior national champion and the record holder Nishan improved his own timing, clocking an impressive 15 minutes, 7. 7 secs. The previous record stood at 15 minutes, 21.1 secs.
In the girls` under-23 triple jump, Ruwani Rubasinghe leaped a distance of 12.30m which surpassed the previous record that stood at 11.72m.
In the men`s under-20 pole vault, Kasun Mihiranga cleared a height of 3.90 feet in his quest to establish a new meet record while M. de Silva of Richmond College ran an improved 23.18 secs in the boys Under 16. The previous record stood at 23.2 secs.
In the under 14, girls long jump saw Kusalani de Silva establishing a new meet record with a leap of 4.79 metres while in men`s under 23 Pole Vault A. Channa cleared a height of 4.41 metres for the record.
D. Chathuranga hurled a distance of 37.76 for his record in the men`s under 23 discuss throw.
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