Doha, Qatar: Doha’s reputation for producing high quality javelin competitions looks set to continue as world leader Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage of Sri Lanka – who threw a national record of 92.62m to win the Diamond League meeting in Rome on June 4 – will line up at the Qatar Sports Club on Friday.
He will join an elite field, which includes Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem and Trinidad’s Keshorn Walcott, the reigning Olympic and world champions respectively. Indian star Neeraj Chopra will not compete this year in Doha, where he breached the 90m mark last year.
In a field bursting with talent, the trio are joined at the Doha Meeting by a host of stars including former two-time world champion and Olympic bronze medallist Anderson Peters of Grenada, and world bronze medallist Curtis Thompson of USA.
Pathirage – the first Sri Lankan male javelin thrower to reach a World Athletics Championships final, finishing seventh in 2025 – is an exciting young talent and will compete in Doha for the first time.
His 92.62m at the Diamond League meeting in Rome added more than two metres to Andreas Thorkildsen’s 20-year-old meeting record and moved him to eighth on the world all-time list.
It was the best throw in the world since the 2024 Olympic final in Paris and he is now the second-best Asian thrower in history behind Nadeem who threw 92.97m on that occasion to win gold.
