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An American hurdling for Sri Lanka at Olympics-by Reemus Fernando Source:Island In the year 2012, the US had more than dozen  female athletes who had run the 400 metres hurdles faster than the IAAF qualifying standard (both ‘A’ and ‘B’) for the London Olympics. The ‘B’ grade qualifying standard was 56.65 seconds. While the countries like Sri Lanka were struggling to qualify athletes for Olympics, the US had a surplus. In fact, in hurdling, the whole of Asia had only three female athletes, the Japanese pair Satomi Kubokura (55.34) and Sayaka Aoki (56.62) and the Chinese Xiaoxiao Huang (56.58), who had run the discipline under the qualifying mark in 2011. By the end of July 2012, six others had managed to run under the ‘A’ and ‘B’ grade standards for Olympics from Asia. During the Olympic qualifying period, the fastest performance of Christine Merrill, born in Bakersfield, a city in ...