Susie keeps Lankan hopes alive

Enters today's WC women's 200m final:

Dinesh Weerawansa reporting from Japan

ATHLETICS: Wonder girl Susanthika Jayasinghe kept Sri Lanka's hopes alive as she stormed into the women's 200m final on day six of the 11th IAAF World Championship at the Nagai Stadium on Thursday night.

Running in the second women's 200m semi final, Jayasinghe clocked 22.66 seconds to finish third behind American Sanya Richards (22.50) and Jamaican Aleen Bailey (22.65).

Today her timing was 0.11 seconds slower than her feat in the first round and in the quarter finals - 22.55, her best 200m timing in seven years.

Yet, that was good enough for her to comfortably book a place in Friday's final. LaShantea Moore (22.73) finished behind Jayasinghe but the American too made it to the final as the first four in each semi final would make it to the last eight.

Defending champion Allyson Felix of USA returned a time of 22.21 seconds to win the first semi final which went on a relatively better pace. The assistance of the wind the sprinters had (+0.8 m/s) too contributed towards that while the second race in which Jayasinghe ran was against the wind (-0.4 m/s).

The Osaka 2007, 100m gold medallist and reigning Olympic champion Veronica Campbell of Jamaica clocked 22.44 to secure the second place. The other two to make it to the final from the first semi final were American Torri Edwards (22.51) and Cylonie Mothersil (22.78) from Caymon Islands, who finished third and fourth respectively.

Jayasinghe did not wish to make any predictions but vowed to give out her brilliant best to 'make Sri Lanka proud'. "Coming to the final alone is a great victory, considering the fact that many tried to dump me, saying my era is gone. But I am happy that I was able to answer all those critics by making it to the last eight," she said after her semi final dash.

This is only the second time that a Lankan has qualified to run in a final of a World Championship in its 24-year-old history. Incidentally, it was Jayasinghe who did it first too, some ten years ago and on that occasion, she went on to bag the silver medal in Athens, 1997 - Lanka's one and only WC medal so far.

Friday could well turn out to be another great milestone in Sri Lanka sports history. "It is going to be a gigantic battle for supremacy. To be honest, I did not have adequate training, compared to those top athletes here. I only had a month-long stint in Los Angeles and I am grateful for the Sports Ministry for assisting me during the last three months," she added.

The Lankan sprint queen said she is ready to take Friday's challenge. "It's a tall order. But I came all the way up to the final, though I was ranked 20th in the world."

"Hence, I am looking forward to my best performance tomorrow," she continued. The much-looked forward to women's 200m final will take place on Friday night at 9.15 p.m. (5.45 p.m. SL time). Besides the women's 200m final, four more gold medallists would emerge on day seven of the 203-nation championship tomorrow.

The other four finals scheduled for tomorrow are women's triple jump, women's javelin throw, men's 400m and men's 100m hurdles.

OSAKA, Thursday.