Sri Lankan Rumesh Pathirage came agonisingly close to breaking Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem’s Asian record en route to winning the men’s javelin throw title at the Rome Diamond League 2026 on Thursday.
Rumesh Pathirage’s winning throw of 92.62m at the Stadio Olympico was just 35 centimetres short of Nadeem’s Asian record-breaking and gold medal-winning throw at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The 23-year-old Lankan’s previous best mark was 89.37m which he had logged in a domestic event in March. He also hit 89.28m the following month at a meet in Nairobi.
In Rome, Rumesh Pathirage hit the mark on his second attempt of the night after clearing 84.49m with his first.
The feat made the Lankan only the fourth Asian to breach the 90m mark in javelin. The others are Chinese Taipei’s Cheng Chao-Tsun (PB 91.36m), India’s former Olympic and world champion Neeraj Chopra (90.23m) and Nadeem, who has breached the mark multiple times.
It also broke a 20-year-old meet record of 90.34, set by Norwegian Andreas Thorkildsen in 2006, by a whopping 2.28 metres.
Rumesh Pathirage also now holds the top two leading throws in men’s javelin this year. It was also the new Sri Lankan national record.
Former world champion Anderson Peters of Grenada was a distant second in Rome with a best mark of 83.91m while the USA’s Curtis Thompson took third place with 83.89m.
Meanwhile, India’s Sachin Yadav had a rather forgettable Diamond League debut in Rome, finishing eighth in a 10-man field, sandwiched between Olympic medallists Julius Yego and Jakub Vadlejch. His best throw measured 79.18m.
It was the 26-year-old Sachin Yadav’s first international athletics meet since he finished a solid fourth at last year’s World Championships in Tokyo with a personal best of 86.27m.
In Tokyo, Yadav had eclipsed two-time Olympic medallist compatriot Neeraj Chopra, who finished an underwhelming eighth with 84.03m.
Sachin Yadav’s season best throw is 81.95m, logged at the Indian Athletics Series 3 in New Delhi in April. The qualifying standards for the Commonwealth Games, set by the Athletics Federation of India, stands at 82.61m.
READ MORE: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/rome-diamond-league-2026-athletics-javelin-throw-report
