Diamond League: India’s Sachin Yadav finishes eighth on Rome debut

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Indian javelin thrower Sachin Yadav endured a difficult debut on the Diamond League circuit , finishing eighth in a 10-man competition.

The 26-year-old could only register a best throw of 79.18m during the event. This throw fell drastically short of his career-best 86.27m, which had earned him a fourth-place finish at the Tokyo World Championships last year. Before this, his strongest mark of the current season was an 81.95m effort that secured him second place at the Indian Athletics Series 3 in New Delhi this past April.

Yadav opened his sequence with a foul, followed by subsequent marks of 79.18m, 77.02m, 76.62m, and 75.54m. He finished eighth after five rounds and failed to qualify for the final three-attempt stage reserved for the leading competitors. 

Sri Lanka`s Pathirage crossed the 90m mark

The headline story of the evening belonged to Sri Lanka`s Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage, who broke records by breaching the 90m milestone for the first time. He unleashed a 92.62m throw on his second attempt to claim the gold medal, recording the second-longest throw by an Asian athlete in history. 

Pathirage`s spectacular launch fell just short of Pakistani Arshad Nadeem`s Olympic gold-winning mark of 92.97m from Paris, but it cleared Chinese Taipei`s Chao-Tsun Cheng (91.36m) and India`s Neeraj Chopra (90.23m) on the all-time Asian charts.

It has been a memorable breakthrough year for Pathirage, who previously placed second at the Rabat Diamond League on May 31 with an 85.97m throw, shortly after winning the Kip Keino Classic title in Nairobi with an 89.28m mark. 

For Sachin Yadav, the Rome event marked his first competitive international match since his fourth-place finish at the 2025 World Championships.

Meanwhile, Indian star Neeraj Chopra skipped the tournament to continue his training regimen in Bienne, Switzerland. No official announcement has been made regarding when Chopra will begin his competitive season in 2026.

The next Diamond League stop scheduled to feature the men`s javelin event will take place in Doha, Qatar, on June 19. The event was originally slated for May 8 but was pushed back to June due to regional geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East.

(With PTI inputs)

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