Sri Lankan para athlete Palitha Bandara has won silver in the men’s discus throw at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, claiming the country’s first medal of the 2026 Games.

Bandara threw 46.84 metres in the final to finish second, a mark Ada Derana reported as a personal best.

The Commonwealth Games Federation’s official medal table shows Sri Lanka in joint 20th place with a single silver, confirming the throw as the team’s first podium finish of the Games. Official results list the athlete as Palitha Halgahawela; Sri Lankan media call him Palitha Bandara.

Gold in the event — contested as a combined-classification men’s discus throw F42-44/F61-64 — went to Wales’ Aled Davies, the 35-year-old winning his second Commonwealth title after Birmingham four years ago, BBC Sport reported. It came on a night when Welsh para-athletes took three medals.

Placings in multi-class para throwing events are not decided by raw distance alone: F42 and F44 results are converted using World Para Athletics’ Raza points system, which weights a throw against the norms of the athlete’s classification, BBC Sport noted.

Bandara arrived in Glasgow as one of Sri Lanka’s most decorated para athletes and as captain of the 40-member squad. He also carried the flag at the opening ceremony, becoming the first para-athlete to lead Sri Lanka’s overall team at a Commonwealth Games, the Daily Mirror reported.

A two-time Paralympian, he finished fifth in the men’s shot put F63 at both Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, won bronze at the 2024 World Para Athletics Championships in Kobe and took silver in the discus at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

The Games run from July 23 to August 2, with Sri Lanka’s 27 male and 13 female athletes competing across seven sports. Weightlifter Supun Dilhara Somathilaka narrowly missed a medal in the men’s 60kg event on July 26 after failing two clean and jerk attempts.

Sri Lanka has won four gold, nine silver and 11 bronze medals across Commonwealth Games history. Its last gold came in 2006, when Chinthana Vidanage won a weightlifting title in Melbourne, and it has not won an athletics gold since Duncan White’s 440-yard hurdles victory at the 1950 Auckland Games. The most recent athletics medal before Glasgow was Yupun Abeykoon’s 100 metres bronze at Birmingham 2022.

Javelin thrower Rumesh Pathirage, with a personal best of 92.62 metres, remains among Sri Lanka’s strongest medal hopes before the Games close.