Sports

Sports

He brought home our first Asian “gold”
Some thoughts on a better tomorrow
By S.R. Pathiravithana
Even at the age of 72 sprightly Nirmalingam Ethirweerasingham still looks the epitome of fitness and yet ready to clear another niche in the cross bar, but once you get talking to him you will soon find out that he is made of much deeper stuff than sports itself and a man with a vision and a mission crying out loud to share his experience with the rest of his brethren in this little island.

Born in Jaffna in 1934 at Priya Vellan and a product of Jaffna Central College, Ethirweerasinghan hailed from a family of cricketers who did well for themselves in that sport in the mid-1900s. Ethirweerasinghan too first took to cricket as a fast bowler and then to athletics as a high jumper, but gave up his first love when he was chosen to represent the country at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 still as a 17-year-old teenager while at school. Then at the 1954 Asian games in Manila he came to share the new record at 1.95 metres with three others but was placed fourth as a result of early misses.

However by the mid-fifties he already had cleared the All-Ceylon record held by H.A. Perera from the 1930’s. He did his feat in 1953.1955 and 56. In 1956 he represented the country in the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia and came into the final round. At the same time he was invited to take up a half scholarship at the California University in the United States. However Ethir’s ‘golden’ moment in life came in the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo where he went over the 6’8” mark to take the “Gold”.

The person who came third at the Manila Games took the “silver”. But, in his next outing at the London Commonwealth Games travel fatigue overcame his natural ability where he had only two days for preparation and fell far short of his target. He said “Flying from Los Angeles to London and from London to Cardiff by train took a lot out of me and I hardly had any time to train. However four hours after the event to convince myself that I had not lost it all I cleared my normal target of 2.8 metres again. Now this is a message to the younger generation – you have peak experience and you will also experience low ones, down in the valley so to speak. It is important to experience the win situation as well as the loss situation and learn to strike a balance. Because a big win situation may be a life time experience and rest may follow then you must learn how to take as they come.

The other important thing is to find out as to what discipline that you are seriously going to take on. There are only a few in the world like Michael Johnson who can take on many disciplines, so you must do a lot of them and take on what you are best at.”

“There is another wrong notion that is prevalent in this country. This mistake is done by a lot of people from parents to educationists. They are under the notion that if a child engages himself in sports he is not going to do well in the educational sphere. This is wrong, it does not mean the student is not fit enough for studies. That itself lets off the snowball effect that the students tend to think that they are not good in studies and lose confidence in it.
With his experience as an educationist and a sports promoter around the world, the Sunday Musings asked Ethir on his thoughts on how the authorities should handle an athlete once he/she reaches the national level and how it is done in the Unites States where he is domiciled now. “All athletes who reach the national and international level do have the capacity to excell in their studies too and they should be given that opportunity.

For instance you take all the medalists in any sport and you will find they are either university students or they have graduated from the university. This fact breaks the bubble where they tend to think that if you are either a cricketer or a person engaged in sports you are not good in your studies. Ironically here in this country the system does not permit one to pursue both fields of activity at the same time. When I was at the University of California the stipulation was that if you are to be given the continuance of being in the university you at least have to be in the “C+” level in our studies too.

So we had to keep up with it. Finally by the time I finished my education I had a master’s degree as well as a PhD from the Cornwell University. In short when an athlete starts to show good results in studies he develops a love for those subjects too. The stimulation and euphoria of achieving makes you both.”
“The primary reason for this is that we do not have our educational system geared for this. Our system still works the way it was more than half a century ago while they themselves have changed. Now take the case of Manjula Kumara.

He could not enter the university here. He had passed his Ordinary Level and through his athletics he got an opening at an American University—University of Southern California. He learned the English language and now at the end of his second year he is on a “B+” level on Economics and Maths which is very good. What happened was when I got him down paving the way for his scholarship he did not know Tamil and I did not know Sinhalese and at the same time he also had to study in English.

I personally feel that if Manjula Kumara had not got injured nine days before the Commonwealth Games he would have won the “gold” medal. According to this year’s performances he was No1 in his event at the games. At present he is No 2 in the universities in the United States.

“We too can introduce a system where we have a sort of a sports university in Sri Lanka, But I must emphasize that it should not come under the University Grants Commission. I think there is something about a Sports University in the Mahinda Chinthanaya too. We can set up such a university in the Hill Country which will be very nice and call it the Faculty of Sports and Technology so that it could cater to a larger segment of students and also go into the areas of designing and manufacturing sports equipment.

Now here every one who enters this university may be a potential medal winner but may not grow up to be that. However they will remain in the periphery. It is especially these second level athletes who will need a future once their athletic careers are over. It is they who need to go into some vocation when they are about 32 or 33. That is what the authorities should gear for. If not we will have some jobless medal holders living in poverty a little after their athletic careers are over.

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