Tharushi and Yupun Warm-Up Indoors
USA and Italy bound athletes from Sri Lanka Tharushi Karunaratne and Yupun Abeykoon commenced their season last weekend, as Tharushi made her NCAA debut!
Sri Lanka's recent Olympic representatives Tharushi Karunaratne, who is now studying at the Tulane University of Louisiana, and Yupun Abeykoon who is making his comeback since his injury last year, started their seasons over the last weekend in Indoor Competitions in their respective countries.
Tharushi makes NCAA debut
Since moving to the United States of America after being granted a scholarship, Tharushi is now part of the 'Greenwave' to enhance her athletic skills outside of Sri Lanka and made her debut at the National Collegiate Athletics Association Championship, comprising of some of the best university talents in USA and around the world with many prospective Olympians.
Tharushi despite being an 800m runner, took up the challenge at the Vanderbilt Indoor Invitational Championship for the 1000m event on Friday and also competed on Saturday in the 400m. In the 1000m, she clocked 2 minutes 49.04 seconds to be placed overall 7th and in the 400m, she was placed overall 2nd with a timing of 54.51 seconds.
A special thanks extends to her manager Sanjaya Ganlath for the results updates.
Yupun makes a comeback with Indoors
Since facing an unfortunate setback last year that denied him from competing at the Olympics, Yupun Abeykoon has commenced his competitive running once again at the 4th Memorial Alessio Giovannini Meet in Ancona.
Yupun Abeykoon Shines in Comeback🇱🇰
— Chathura Ranasinghe (@Chaththa_R) January 18, 2025
Sri Lanka’s sprint star Yupun Abeykoon clocked an impressive 6.68 seconds to place 4th in the 60m at the Ancona Indoor 2025, beating European Champion ‘23 Samuel Cicerelli. This was his first race after recovering from injury last year. pic.twitter.com/o3Z4SNIkHI
In the Heats, Yupun clocked 6.70 seconds and in the final, he bettered his time slightly with 6.68 seconds in the Finals for a 4th place finish. This is the same competition he clocked 6.59 seconds for the national record in 2021.
Do these races count for points?
You may wonder, why both athletes competed in events that are of different distances to their usual events, like running 1000m instead of 800m and a 60m burst instead of 100m.
The simple answer is training for burst speeds and endurance, which are critical for either athlete and to serve up as warm ups before their major events to come. But regarding to the question, the answer is yes but also no.
In athletics, the ranking system works on the best 5 results from the last 12 or 18 months (depending on the event competing) and other distances count as well, like 60m results for the 100m sprinters while distances of 600m and 1000m count for the 800m runners.
However, the points gained from these events do not exceed either of their 5th best results from last year to gain any new points in their current world rankings. Therefore, we wish them ahead for their future races in order to gain crucial points ahead of the World Championship coming later this year.
Make sure to check out this link by Chathura Kumarasinghe, an athletics statistician and writer regarding the progress of athletes and their points.
