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Olympic medallist Susanthika Jayasinghe will compete in a couple of IAAF Grand Prix meets in Europe before running at the Asian Athletic championships in Colombo. In between the IAAF Grand Prix meets and the Asian Championship, Jayasinghe will be running at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Jayasinghe, who has been training with the Sri Lanka national poolists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia since April, was in Colombo this week for a short break to obtain visas for her scheduled IAAF Grand Prix tour of Europe.

National coach Dervin Perera said the celebrated Lankan women sprinter will run at two key IAAF Grand Prix meets in England and Germany. Jayasinghe left for Malaysia to join her team mates in Kuala Lumpur and they will train there until July 5.

The other Sri Lanka pool training in Bangkok, Thailand too is due to return to Colombo on July 10. This group includes Asian Games double gold medallist Damayanthi Darsha and Asian Championship double gold medallist Rohan Pradeep Kumara, regarded as two of the gold medal prospects at the Colombo Asian Championships.

Hosts Sri Lanka is set to produce their best ever performance at the Asian Athletic Championship history when Colombo conducts the mega event in August.

Sri Lanka team will have some of the top athletes in the region - Susanthika Jayasinghe, Damayanthi Darsha, Sugath Tillakaratne, Sriyani Kulawansa and Rohan Pradeep Kumara, all gold medallists at the previous Asian Championships. Their presence will give Sri Lanka their best chance of producing a rich gold harvest.

It was Jayasinghe (women's 200m) and Sriyani Kulawansa (women's 100m hurdles) who first won gold medals for Sri Lanka at the 1995 Asian Championships in Jakarta, Indonesia. Then it was Darsha and Tillakaratne who met with golden feats at the 1998 Asian Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. Sri Lanka's star performer at the previous Asian Championship in Jakarta, 2000 was young Rohan Pradeep Kumara, who won the men" 400m gold and also anchored the Lankan 4 x 400m relay team for another gold.

Since then, Sri Lanka athletics has gone from strength to strength with Darsha winning women's 200m and 400m gold medals and Tillakaratne securing men's 400m gold and 200m bronze at the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games. Then came the most memorable feat in Lankan sports history when Jayasinghe won women's 200m bronze at the Sydney Olympic Games. Motivated by their recent success and home advantage, the Lankan athletes are sure to come out with their best ever effort in the Asian Championship history.

Meanwhile, the visiting Asian Amateur Athletic Association officials, headed by the 4As Secretary General Maurice Nicholas, had important rounds of discussions yesterday too. National coach Dervin Perera, who is also Deputy Director of Sports at the Ministry of Sports, said the Asian body is happy with the progress made by Sri Lanka. Perera said they should be able to complete the local preparations on schedule. He said the redevelopment work at the main running track and the new warm-up track is nearing completion and should be ready by the middle of next month.

The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (ANCL) (Print media sponsor) and Dialog GSM (Sri Lanka team sponsor and the official web hoster) are two of the six Gold sponsors of the event.

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