Sri Lanka’s Rumesh Tharanga won the men’s javelin at the Lausanne Diamond League on Friday night, beating Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra of India by nine centimetres in one of the closest finishes of the series this season.
Tharanga threw 88.14m at the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise to take the win. Chopra finished second with 88.05m — his best mark of the season — while former world champion Anderson Peters of Grenada was third with 86.69m.
The competition turned on the second round. Chopra opened with 83.54m, then moved ahead of Tharanga with his 88.05m effort. Tharanga answered immediately with 88.14m and was not headed again. Chopra registered 83.72m with his third throw, fouled his fourth, skipped the fifth and closed with 82.15m.
“I didn’t realise it was only nine centimetres, it was really close, but I’m happy with the 88m throw,” Chopra said afterwards. “To be honest, it didn’t feel like it went 88m because I felt very relaxed. I tried really hard and later focused on my technique. With every competition, I feel that I’m coming back.”
Third Diamond League win of the season
The result is Tharanga’s third Diamond League victory of 2026, after wins in Doha and Rome. His 92.62m in Rome in June — listed by World Athletics as a national record — remains the world-leading mark for the year.
The Lausanne meeting, known as Athletissima, had been billed as a test of the depth behind Tharanga. Daily Mirror reported ahead of the event that Germany’s Julian Weber, the world No. 1, had withdrawn, leaving Chopra, Peters, Jakub Vadlejch, Keshorn Walcott and Marc Anthony Minichello in the field. NewsFirst reported the javelin was scheduled to start at 11.52 p.m. Sri Lanka time.
Tharanga, who won Sri Lanka’s first Commonwealth Games athletics gold in Glasgow last month, competes internationally under the full name Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage.
At the time of writing, no Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own report of the result.
