Nov 2: Sri Lanka's sprint queen Susanthika Jayasinghe burnt the tracks at the National Athletic Championships here on Sunday to set a new Sri Lanka 100 metres record ahead of the Bangkok Asian Games, proving beyond doubt that she was fighting fit in spite of a sex scandal and a temporary ban for suspected drug abuse.The new national record of 11.28 seconds was only 0.01 second behind the gold-winning performance of China's Liu Xiamei in the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games. It was also a major improvement on the previous national record, also set by her, of 11.41 seconds.``I am so happy,'' said a beaming Susanthika, as she shook hands with fans and a few officials who came up to congratulate her. But when she was told that she had missed the Asian Games record by a fraction of a second, her reaction was a dismayed aiyyo!On Saturday, on the opening day of the national meet, which is a warm-up to the upcoming Asiad, Susanthika ran her favourite 200 mts in 23.28 seconds. It was her first race in morethan a year and though it was an adequate performance, the star athlete, who has been plagued by one controversy after another for the last one year, expressed her unhappiness with it. But she blamed the rainy weather and the soggy track for failing to break her own national record of 23.23 seconds.There were no such complaints today. A strong sun had dried out the track and Susanthika flashed past with her new Flo-Jo look, her braids and beads flying.Later, she leapt excitedly at the results and fell at the feet of her coach Captain D M G Dissanayake as a mark of respect to him.``All Sri Lankans will be happy with her performance,'' Dissanayake told The Indian Express. ``She will get us at least two gold at Bangkok, for 100 mts and 200 mts,'' he said of his ward with supreme confidence. The Bangkok Games will be Susanthika's first international meet since the Athens World Championships.Susanthika has been at the centre of controversy since winning the world 200m silver at Athens in 1997.She first alleged that Sri Lanka's sports minister had made sexual advances towards her and that after she spurned these advances, other sports administrators had refused to support her.Then, a random urine test by the Sri Lanka Amateur Athletics Association (SLAAA) found traces of Nandrolene, a performance enhancing substance which led to a provisional ban on her. The ban was lifted on the advise of the doping committee of the International Amateur Athletics Federation(IAAF), when a three member SLAAA committee before whom Susanthika testified and submitted a written explanation, was unable to arrive at a unanimous conclusion.Two of the three members stated that there was no strong or conclusive evidence to show that the athlete had then the drug. Susanthika said at the time it vindicated her stand that she had been fixed by sports administrators. Though cleared in time for the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, she did not participate in the Games citing inadequate training. She started off inthe national meet as a bit of a dark horse as no one had seen her run in more than a year, but with today's performance, no one seemed to be in doubt about her abilities.
