Sad plight of Sri Lanka Athletics
We have seen a sudden dearth of talented athletes when compared to the past. I cannot say now the standards of athletics has dropped as I have retired from athletics a long time ago. I get all these observations from printed and the electronic media. When compared to our times, I have noted in every athletic event, the present participation of competitors is less. I am the only athlete, who may have participated in most of the athletic events such as 100, 200, 400,800,1500, 4x100 and 4x400. In each event I was able to create a national record. What I have observed is during those days,after retiring from athletics, there were many competitors competing for above mentioned events. These athletes not only won the national championships but participated in international championships as well. There is a big difference in athletics in my era and the present era. We participated in championships with lot of difficulties.We did not have sponsors and facilities. But the present athletes get the best resources and facilities.There are people to look after them. Today there are more international championships than our period. But performance wise, the present set of athletes cannot be compared to the performance of athletes in our period. Today in a running event, seldom do we see attempts to break records.The main reason is, the present set of athletes make no sacrifice to achieve their targets. Today we only see a commercialised show. If we had the same facilities as the present day athletes we should have performed better”.
“Our athletic performances have suddenly come down, when you compare with the past.The best example is in the recently concluded Asian junior athletic championships where we failed to win a single medal though 24 athletes took part. Even national champion athletes lost. We have no plans to safe guard the young talented athletes. Today we have no faith in the sport of athletics. Today our athletes set their records from athletic events such as Pole Vault, Discuss Throw and Hammer throw .But no records in sprint events. Recently the javelin record established was after many years. In year 2000, the 8th placed athlete in 400m finished the race at a time of 47.1 seconds. But today’s champion of the same event has set the same record. Hence obviously there is no improvement in athletics in this country.Today the officials who are responsible for athletics,only do is send out teams to overseas championships at the expense of Ministry of Sports.Today, these officials are sending out athletes to open athletic championships in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. And they bring lot of gold medals but it is not worth it as they are not very competitive championships. It is not helping our athletics in the long run at all. These competitions are not worth at all due to non-competitiveness. During those days we had coaches who guided the athletes free-of-charge but the present day coaches do their part for money only.
“My personal view is there is a sudden drop of athletics in this country.The main reason for the downfall is we don’t have competitive local and international competitions. Due to this our national level athletes have no opportunity to make progress. The best example I can give is – the case of our Olympian Sachith Maduranga, the javelin thrower. He qualified for the Olympics by throwing the Javelin at 84 metres last year. But since then he has failed to maintain or improve on the 84 meter distance that he made. Hence I see, due lack of competitions he has failed to progress. We have no proper plan to improve athletics in Sri Lanka. But I think when S.B.Dissnayake was Minister of Sports, he had a vision to develop the athletics in this country. The minister himself, Sunil Gunawardena, Derwin Perera and Lakshman de Alwis after having many discussions made a pool targeting the Olympics. They established a junior, senior , intermediate and an Olympic Pool. Many laughed at the plan they made for the Olympics,and criticised.But at the end all Sri Lankans were able to witness ace sprint queen Susanthika Jayasinghe winning a medlal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. I think this is the best way to develop the sport. Even if India is a powerful nation, in the sport of athletics they are second to us.The very reason for saying this is, we have bagged many medals in athletics than India has obtained. The Athletic administration should be more active than in the recent past. The president of Athletic association –Sugath Thilakaratne - makes a valiant attempt to see athletics prosper in Sri Lanka, but the officials around him have no interest at all.”
“Sri Lankan athletics occupied a pride of place in the past consistently winning medals and performing well at SAF, Asian, Commonwealth,Olympics and at world level meets. Today Sri Lankan athletics has fallen to its lowest level in terms of international performances. We are not a force to be reckoned with even at the SAF level cutting a sorry picture at present.This was seen especially during the last decade and this unfortunate situation is a direct result of many reasons. During this period the National Athletic Association hardly had a development programme or a vision to lead athletics. Administrators holding on to major positions too long was undoubtedly the cause for it. Despite reminders by all concerned, the athletic administration failed to concentrate on building up a second and third line of athletes to fill the vacuum created by the best first level athletes we saw during the recent past.
The Athletics Association will not be able to develop athletics alone.The main contributory factor in my opinion is the non-availability of a co- ordinated national development programme for the athletics involving the Ministry of Sports, Athletics administration ( National Association ) and schools. The decline of school athletics was another major issue that we can identify in this situation. Especially during the time of veteran sports administrator Sunil Jayaweera, top athletes in the calibre of Susanthika Jayasinghe, Damayanthi Darsha, Sriyani Kulawansa, Sugath Thillakaratne and many others were produced by the schools sector who brought honour and glory to the motherland later as national athletes. The National Schools Sports Festival at that time was a Model Games that looked like a Mini Olympics in Sri Lanka.
I understand that the present Minister of Sports has already launched a coordinated programme involving the Ministry of Sports and the Ministry of Education to promote national sports involving the National Sports Associations, this is bound to bring some hope for the future. At the same time we must bring an end to group politics in athletics and elect the best and the most deserving administrators to run the National Athletic Association if we want to see the rise of athletics in the country once again to some level.”