Cherantha de Silva

In February 2018, de Silva was named to Sri Lanka's 2018 Commonwealth Games team. This was his 2nd representation of the Commonwealth Games edition. Cherantha was part of 4 × 100 m freestyle relay team that made history for Sri Lanka by advancing in to the finals. "The 4-man swim team representation in the Gold Coast, powered their way through to the final of the Men’s 4x100m Freestyle event earlier this morning." However, the team had met with an unexpected incident of disqualification which resulted in a great upset by the 4-man team.

Following the success of the 2018 Commonwealth Games, De Silva was selected for the 2018 Asian Games which was held in August.

In December 2017, De Silva was able to set history for Sri Lanka by breaking a foreign national record. De Silva was able to shatter Singapore Olympian Quah Wen Zeng's 50-m butterfly record, thus renewing it to 23.48 seconds. (He broke the Singapore national record and Sri Lankan national record, as well as set a new meet record in this race.) The speciality of De Silva's performance was that he was able to break 11 records across 10 events(heats and finals) in just two days. (record summary: Combination of heats, finals and a meet record.)

De Silva had the honour to be a part of the so-called world's first swimmer's movie. Named "Lane zero-The Lane of Dreams" showcases his and his team member's preparation towards the 2016 Rio Olympics. The director of this award-winning documentary named Manuel Tera describes the documentary like this "A feature-length documentary about the struggle of a group of swimmers from developing nations trying to qualify for the Olympic Games for the first time. A story about pursuing your dreams and overcoming adversity." The Documentary has been nominated at the sports film festival in Italy and it was able to secure an award for "The Best Sound". At present, the documentary has been sold to North and South America as well as a few countries in Europe.

In 2016 De Silva participated at the South Asian Games in Guwahati, India where he won one Gold, four Silver and two Bronze medals.

De Silva was selected in 2015 by the Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union (SLASU) to receive the country's first FINA affiliated international training scholarship to train at the Thanyapura Aquatic Training Centre in Phuket, Thailand. His scholarship has been renewed for the next 4 years consecutively; in order 2015,2016,2017 and 2018. He was bestowed with the scholarships selected as the most deserving swimmer selected by the Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union(SLASU).

De Silva subsequently competed in the 2014 FINA World Swimming Championships held in Doha, Qatar, where he swam in the heats of the Open 50m butterfly, Open 100m butterfly, Open 50m freestyle and Open 100m freestyle.

De Silva participated at 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, competing in the 50m and 100m freestyle and the 50m and 100m butterfly but failed to progress past the heats.

In 2014 the former Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage sponsored de Silva to train at the Bolles School, Jacksonville, Florida.

Cherantha De Silva (born 12 July 1996) is a Sri Lankan medal-winning swimmer, who has represented his country at 5 FINA World Championship's, 3 FINA World Cup's, 2 Commonwealth Games, 1 Asian Games as well as 1 South Asian Games, winning 7 medals. De Silva holds 6 national records (50m,100m and 200m and butterfly SCM & LCM). As well he was qualified with 4 World championship B standards(B cuts) for the 2018, 14th FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) held in Hangzhou, China. He narrowly missed the A standard (A cut) in the 50m Butterfly (SCM) clocking 23.48. While the A standard could have made history for Sri Lanka as the first Sri Lankan to achieve the A standard he missed it by 0.2 seconds.