Prasanna confident of winning a medal in China

Chris DHAMBARAGE

He was almost down and out after an off field controversy had completely rocked his athletic career. After a period of turbulence and having thrown into the wilderness he is back on the track with a vengeance. Twenty seven year old Prasanna Sampath Amarasekera is looking confident and stronger than ever before as he will be spearheading Sri Lanka's medal prospects at the 18th Asian Athletic Championships which gets underway on Sunday in Guangahou, China.

The former schoolboy from Dharmapala MV, Bandaragama and a rural athlete from Haldummulla is determined to make amends for his early setbacks and to help his country make a lasting impact at this important event.

Even then for Prasanna Amarasekera this has been a real testing time and a moment of survival which would have certainly brought any other athlete down to earth. However he was able to overcome the storm in a most critical stage of his career and is looking forward to bring more glory to his country.

Amarasekera from Sri Lanka Army will be in action on the opening day of the meet when he competes in the Men's 400 metres preliminary round with the semi-finals scheduled in the evening on the same day.

Prasanna believes that this is a huge task for him considering the fact that the Sri Lankan contingent will be arriving in China just 24 hours before the start of the meet. He noted that it is customary that the athletes have at least two full days of training and preparations ahead of a major event.

Nevertheless he is confident that he could clear this hurdle successfully like he had overcome some of his problems which he faced in life during the last couple of months. In fact Amarasekera has been facing many challenges from the moment he launched his career as a budding young athlete.

He first participated in the 100 and 200 metres and in the long jump but decided to shift to the 400 metres event on the advice of veteran coach Sunil Gunawardena. Thereafter his career blossomed and was able to earn a reputation as one of the top athletes in the country.

In fact his childhood dream was to become an athlete having seen some of the heroics of Susanthika Jayasinghe, Sugath Tillekeratne, Rohan Pradeep Kumara and Damayanthi Darsha.

The record speaks volumes of his talent and potential having bagged an overall total 30 medals including 9 gold, 16 silver and 5 bronze medals at Asian level since the year 2000.

Amarasekera was able to create history and win a bronze medal for the first time in the 2007 World Military Games in the Men's 400 metres event out of competitors from 180 countries.

In the same year he performed another unique feat by winning the solitary medal for Sri Lanka at the Asian Indoor Athletic championships held in Macau.

He followed up this performance by winning the gold medal at the Asian Championships in Jordan.

Amarasekera has also participated in three World Championships in Edmonton (2001), Paris (2003) and Helsinki (2005). In addition he has competed in two Commonwealth Games held in Manchester (2002) and Melbourne (2006) respectively.