Sri Lanka’s men’s 4 x 400m and women’s 4 x 100m relay teams entered the finals of the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou today. Sri Lanka’s men’s 4 x 400m Lankan team ran a season’s best three minutes, 07.52 seconds to secure the third place in their semi final heat and made it to Friday’s final at the Aoti Stadium.
The Lankan 400m relay team comprised Prasanna Sampath Amarasekera, Rohitha Pushpakumara, Uditha Wickremasinghe and Kasun Kalhara Seneviratne. Japan came first in the race clocking 3:06:53, followed by India (3:07.00), Sri Lanka and South Korea (3:09.49).
Sri Lanka’s women’s relay team, comprising Yamuna Niranjala, Jani Chathurangani Silva, Sujani Buddhika and Chandrika Subashini, had a surprise chance of making it to the finals of women’s 4 x 100m event after two teams were disqualified. In their absence, Sri Lanka team, which finished third out of five teams that competed in heat two, clocked 45.49 seconds to make it to the last eight.
Japan won the heat in 44.73 seconds, followed by China (44.78) and Sri Lanka. But misfortune struck Sri Lanka in the men’s 4 x 100m due to a fault in the baton chance before the anchor lap. China won the heat 2 with a season’s best 39.03 seconds.