Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

New water sports centre at Ports City

- By Pranavesh Sivakumar

A multifacet­ed Water Sports Centre was launched at the Port City premises in Colombo amidst an exclusive gathering on Friday by Lanka Sportreize­n (LSR), Sri Lanka's only travel and tourism agency related to sports tourism. The Water Sports Centre, Colombo's first- of-its-kind, opened to the public from this week, will be offering dozens of water-based recreation­al and training activities.

Among the dozens of activities that would be offered would be - diving, snorkellin­g, wind surfing lessons, water skiing lessons, wakeboard lessons, banana boat rides, ringo and sofa rides, canoeing and sea jet ski riding. Coming at a cost of little over Rs.200 million by Thilak Weerasingh­e, the father-in-law of Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa, he had decided to venture into this project continuing his long standing associatio­n with sporting events.

In the past, Weerasingh­e had also staged the Colombo Marathon, Rumble in the Jungle, So Sri Lanka Pro and Sri Lanka Tea Cup, all internatio­nal events, and now this the latest addition and attraction. The reason behind this has been to have a water sports centre at the picturesqu­e Port City for leisure as well as training purposes for people to practise the activities on offer.

Guests based on their experience and eligibilit­y will be monitored and guided by the experts of LSR. There will be steps to be followed and level by level progressio­n will take the participan­ts to higher levels. This has been opened to the public with a lot of safety precaution­s and training available since these are their early stages. Their key areas are providing services, training their guests and renting the equipment. LSR is also equipped with every diving resource available for the all-water sports affair.

Apart from the fully fledged water centre, this also offers a club house built at the venue along with recreation­al plans for families.Operationa­l times would be from 6.30am to 11.00am and from 3.00pm to 6.30pm.

 ?? ?? A flyboard demonstrat­ion on show - Pix by Akila Jayawardan­a
A flyboard demonstrat­ion on show - Pix by Akila Jayawardan­a

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