The Sri Lankan Sports Club in Glasgow set up a crowd-funding page in August. The target was £900, but donations eventually reached £780. There are many such crowd-funding efforts that have been set up by the Sri Lankan diaspora all over the world. All with the solitary aim to help a certain Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage.
By trade, the 23-year-old is a javelin thrower whose sport demands him to travel for tournaments across the world, racking up costs that are eased by his employment in the Sri Lankan Air Force. But the youngster does not have any major sportswear sponsor, like most of his rivals. The tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean may not be a major market for global brands, but Pathirage has emerged as one of the biggest names there is on the world athletics circuit.
2026 has been his breakout year. He has been aided by the help and support of well-wishers around the world, as he won almost every event he has competed in.
On a rainy Monday night at the Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium in Nagoya City, Japan, he added one more major title to his growing bag of accolades – the Asian Games gold medal.
“This year was a very good season,” he told reporters after his latest triumph. “My first target was to become Diamond League champion, my second target was Ultimate champion (World Athletics Ultimate Championships), third Commonwealth Games champion and last Asian Games champion. I did it in all competitions.”
He has taken this season by storm.There has been a sharp upswing in his performance when compared to the distances he had been throwing till last year. In the 2025 season, he recorded his career’s best throw at the 1st Indian Open World Athletics Bronze Level Continental Tour, in Bhubaneshwar, with a throw of 86.5m that secured him top spot.
This year though, he has not so much challenged more established opponents as much as he has decimated the field.
At the Rome Diamond League in June, he joined the elite list of javelin throwers to clear the 90m mark when he launched his spear a career best 92.62m – a world leading mark.
In August, he threw 92.07m at the Diamond League meet in Zurich, making him only the first javelin thrower this season – and fourth in history – to register two 92m+ throws in a single season.
He was at it again at the World Athletics Ultimate Championships in Budapest last month, with a throw of 91.09m, which came a week before he won the Diamond League Final in Brussels.
There have been only eight times that an Asian has thrown past the 90m mark. Reigning Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem has done it three times. Chinese Taipei’s Cheng Chao-tsun, the first Asian to do so, in 2017, did it once, as did former Olympic and world champion Neeraj Chopra of India. Pathirage’s season has seen him throw past the 90m mark three times – the three best throws by anybody in the world this season.
Interestingly, he credits his recent success to another sport he dabbled with in his early days – cricket.
Once a budding fast bowler who registered a 134 kmph delivery during a national talent search in 2019, the man from Horana, in the Kalutara district just south of Colombo, took up athletics after being encouraged by his father, a former discus thrower and shot putter.
“That’s the bowling action, same like in javelin throw,” he told reporters on Monday. “Cricket is a big help for me and my career.”
Despite the distances he had been hitting, the weather conditions at the Asian Games were threatening to dampen his momentum.
Pathirage struggled to grip his javelin because of the rain and managed only a weak 73.53m in his first throw, but went a bit better to 83.34m in his second to move into second place, behind India’s Yashvir Singh.
The third attempt was a foul, but the fourth took him to the gold medal spot with a heave of 88.33m. He went better in his sixth attempt, 88.55m to secure his country’s first gold medal at the 2026 Asian Games.
And he did it with javelins he needed to purchase recently.
After the triumph in Budapest, he was shocked to find his five javelins were broken during the journey home.
“It caused a priceless loss for me,” Pathirage had told reporters at the time, as reported by Al Jazeera. “(But) It’s not a big issue. I’ll move on.”
He did.
On Monday he was asked if he had adjusted to the new javelins.
“It’s not a problem,” he said. “I can throw any javelin.”
He’s done it better than anybody else this year.