Golden Baton arrives in Sri Lanka

Greatest race athletes felicitated

By Samiddha Kalmith Rathnayake
A press conference to felicitate the national team running in the ‘Greatest Race on Earth’ (GROE) marathon and to mark the arrival of the Golden Baton to Sri Lanka was held at Sugathadasa Outdoor Stadium yesterday.

The marathon, sponsored by the Standard Chartered Bank is open to any team of four runners. Each person runs one of the four marathons in Nairobi, Singapore, Mumbai and Hong Kong. The teams with the fastest aggregate time get a chance to share the prize money of US$1.08 million, the largest prize pool in world athletics.

Standard Chartered has revamped the fourth series of the GROE to focus more on the national team competition. In addition, a new initiative called The Environment Challenge has also been introduced for this year’s series. Along with the USD 1.08 million prize money, participating GROE countries also stand to benefit from an additional USD 1 million as part of the Environment Challenge.

With the arrival of the new series format and the Environment Challenge, a record number of national teams are participating, with 54 from 34 countries signing up. New countries include the USA, Brazil, Peru, Germany, Lebanon, Japan and Russia.

Kenya has won three GROE Nations Challenge titles so far, narrowly beating Zimbabwe in the 2006/07 series to claim first place and win the Gold Baton.

The four races are:

• The ‘highest race,’ at over 1,600m, in Nairobi - 28th October 2007
• The ‘island race’ around Singapore - 2nd December 2007
• The ‘historic race’ through Mumbai - 20th January 2008
• The ‘harbour race’ across Hong Kong - 17th February 2008

The Sri Lanka team is led by Sujeewa Pushpakumara this year and Ishan Kumara Kelekorale, Ajith Bandara and Jeevakumaran Sivaperumal are the rest of runners in the men’s team. The female team is led by Manjula Kumarasinghe, including Chandrawathi Marasinghe, Lakmini Anuradhi Bogahawatta and Mallika Chandrakanthi Wickrama Aratchchige.

Sri Lanka team placed second in the South Asia segment last year will be competing again for a share of the prize money and to bring home the Golden Baton. At the most recently concluded Mumbai marathon, Sri Lanka’s Ajith Bandara defeated India’s Lyngkhoi Bining with a record timing of 02:24:07 which makes him the winner of the regional category for South Asia and the Middle East. He is currently rated 17th in the overall marathon. Lakmini Anuradhi Bogahawatta, local runner for Singapore also beat her Indian counterpart by 4 seconds to clinch the female title for the same region, with a timing of 03:04:21.

The Sri Lankan team has consistently maintained their lead in the South Asia Middle East Category ever since they set off for the first Marathon in Nairobi in 2007. The team is left with the final Marathon in Hong Kong set for February 17, 2008.