Sports

Sports

Waiting for Godot?
By S.R. Pathiravithana
Godot can be understood as one of the many things in life that people wait for. It is a tragicomedy which was written by Samuel Beckett in the middle of the last century.

Coming back to reality now, are we having a re-run of that same play? -- this time however it comes courtesy, local athletics.

Exactly two months ago over a storm and thunder, Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government Janaka Bandara Tennekone and his erstwhile committee took charge of national athletics with a promise of reshaping the entire structure and brining in new ideas and development plans. However, has the wine gone sour? Or is it the old wine was served again in an old bottle only with a new stopper?

When the new committee was voted into power the reaction of some of the crowd was one of displeasure. They alleged that local athletics was back on to bad times and some even pondered as to what background of athletics that JBT belonged to.

Like every politician who talks. JBT also spoke of the better tomorrow that he intended ushering in and also spelled out as to how he intended doing so. On paper (or in thin air) his ideas looked solid, workable and some even promised the old magic tonic that was injected into local athletics about two decades ago.

Once when the Sunday Musings met him he spelled it out well. He said "As we all know at present there are many impediments in the sphere of athletics and one of the biggest anomalies is that Sri Lanka now cannot boast of a strong second string who are ready to take over from the present aging senior lot. This is one of the main reasons that I decided to come forward to help athletics in this country. But, this is not an endeavour that I can tackle alone. This is an exercise that has to be attended to with a common forum sans internal politics."

The minister pointed out that one of the main reasons for the dwindling standards of athletics was the falling standards in discipline and factionalism.

Then speaking on the future plans of the AAA the president of the Amateur Athletic Association said "The first step in our new strategy is to get the schools' athletic sphere involved in the mainstream and we are hoping to start discussion on this with the relevant education authorities very soon. Then the next is getting the cadet corps also involved in the process and we have Maj. Gen. Gamini Jayasundera who is in charge of this military arm, through whom we can help the potential school athletes directly as we have invited him to join the AAA committee. Then we have planned to invite all potential athletes from the respective districts in the island. Then they need not come to Colombo, we will be going over to their home towns to meet them".

The Minister continued "To launch all these ideas we already approached several prospective sponsors who will come up with the money necessary to meet the expenses involved. At the same time I have a lot of overseas contacts and already have invited them to help us. I have made arrangements to send three or four athletes to Japan, I only hope that they will come back to Sri Lanka after their training so there will be continuity in the programme. Then we have plans to make the maximum use of our local trainers and at the same time we are also hoping to get down suitable foreign coaches who could impart with the latest methods of training to our own coaches."

Finally the minister said "As far as I am concerned this is the beginning of a long journey. There are further shortcomings in the system which need to be addressed. From the endeavour of building a hostel at the headquarters premises every thing will have to be started off from scratch. At the same time every thing has to be done within the year that I am elected".

Words of wisdom indeed. But, now comes the bitter part. Two months have lapsed. What has the AAA done so far? Have they had a single session with the education ministry on the development of the national schools programme? What has happened about the development programmes? These are the accusations that are levelled at the minister at present. One irate athletics strongman who opted not to be named said that at present there are more things to be accomplished than sitting at a committee meeting once a month! Now it seems that the very base of the AAA structure is slowly cracking and the entire sport is slowly heading towards another conflict.

Meanwhile the Derwin Perera faction met the AAA president on 20th May along with a contingent of athletes. There they pointed out many impediments that ails athletics in the country and to this the minister has requested them to put all their grievances in writing so that he could take appropriate action. At the same time they have also made a request to the president to make arrangements to send the 60 selected coaches to the Patyala University, India for their training course for which the AAA or the government would not have to bear any costs as everything was found. But still they were awaiting the reply from the AAA president on the matter.

As at present it does not seem to move at the required pace, or moving at all. If we have to wait for things to happen will it be like waiting for Godot?

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