Royal College thrower Charith Kapukotuwa continued to prosper in his pet event as he established the first record of the meet, clearing an impressive distance of 55.23 meters in the Boys’ Under-19 Discus Throw, on the first day of athletic championship of the All-Island Schools Sports Festival which commenced at the Sugathadasa Stadium, Colombo, on Friday (26).

It was the second record established by Kapukotuwa within a phase of just four weeks after he set up the Sir John Tarbet Senior Schools Athletic Championship’s Under-20 Boys’ Discus Throw record (50.04 meters) early this month.

Kapukotuwa’s outstanding performance dwarfed the previous record held by St. Joseph’s College (Darley Road) athlete Amila Perera by five meters, and stood majestically above the feats of the rest of the throwers. His record breaking throw went a long 13 meters beyond that of Umayanga Sanka Pushpa of Rahula College, Matara, who won the silver medal for a modest 43.20-meter throw.

Kapukotuwa’s schoolmate D.S.T. Hettiarachchi threw 43.13 meters to win the bronze. Incidentally, two other throwers, T.S. Samaraweera of Dharmaraja College, Kandy, and V. Hareekaran of Hartley College, Jaffna, —who was the only athlete to win a medal for Jaffna last year— managed to win colours.

In the two track events conducted on Fri., athletes of Ratnayake MV, Walala, showed a glimpse of the things to come in the next four days as they bagged both the Golds on offer for their Central Province. While Mihirani Seelaratne clocked 10 minutes and 39.56 secs. to win the U-19 Girls’ 3000m, Weerasinghe clocked 16 minutes 12.63 secs. to win the U-19 Boys’ 5000m.