This comes as a special message to our new sports minister. Hope he is open to some advice. We at this end wish that you have arrived at this place for the long haul and not as a stop gap. Yes, Sri Lanka is a place where interims go on forever and ministers change like a snake’s outer skin. They are dumped more frequently than we buy a shirt for ourselves.
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A new sports minister starting his journey at the bottom of the pit staring up at the stark truth is very….very auspicious, because from this point no one can show him the flowery veils that cover the sins behind. Sri Lanka really had hit the bottom of its sports -- maybe barring cricket which is not a mere sport but a national obsession. Yet even the cricketers, who betted on a set of aging horses at the Asian Games, failed miserably and one really lamented that if India had decided to be in the fray for the Gold in China, Sri Lanka wouldn’t have even been fighting for the bronze which they failed to win.
Things are really bad and we must be serious about it.
It is anyone’s guess whether you Mr. Minister, using the powers vested in you, will appoint a pundit or a set of them and call him/them – ‘the Commission of Inquiry for the Guangzhou debacle’. They in turn will point their fingers at certain individuals and their heads will roll, but would/could they arrive at the crux of the matter and find a solution to this predicament – that is the question that we need an answer to.
 Somewhere I read that Susanthika Jayasinghe is planning to come out of retirement and run for the country in search of lost gold. In another instance, NOC Chief Hemasiri Fernando has quipped that we now must earmark the 2018 Commonwealth Games for our resurgence. He also stressed the importance of harnessing rural talent and making it the vehicle for that purpose.
He has said that he is going to present his proposals to President Mahinda Rajapaksa soon. With all due respect to the IOC chief, we ask what were they doing when things were going bad? Didn’t they foresee what was in store for Lankan sports/athletics since the weaning of their medal yielding force 2-3 years ago? The preparations for this period should have come 6-8 years ago,
On the other hand while welcoming Susanthika back on stage; we must also remind her that it is not the solution to the present woes of Lankan sports.
At this stage we moved on and met a man who really was a main cog-in-the-wheel when the country had its fairytale run in international athletics. He is none other than former head of sports at the Education Ministry – Sunil Jayaweera.
Promptly we took the chance and fired the question. What were his views of the current scenario? Jayaweera was of the view that the present situation is the culmination of a series of political decisions taken down the line with regard to junior sports in this country. He said: “The dream run in sports in this country was a direct result of the National Schools Games concept that was started in 1984. It gathered huge momentum. I say the entire lot of athletes – from Susanthika Jayasinghe, Damayanthi Dharsha to anyone else you can name, came in as a result of this huge programme that we launched at that time. It gathered further momentum when S.B. Dissanayake as the then Sports Minister put a lot of emphasis on it and made it work.”
He said that to back his programme, the Ministry of Education also set up special Sports Schools in many areas and set a programme to sustain the athletes who attended those schools. “That was in 1991. Each athlete got a stipend of Rs.1000 a month and they were also given their spikes and track suits. Today there are still sports schools. But the children there do not get track kits and spikes from the ministry. After 19 years, they are still getting the same stipend of Rs.1000. But I know the programme is not effective and that is why it does not yield results at all.
“Even the National Schools Games today is only a namesake event. Today the biggest happening is if a coach picks up a young athlete he would take him to a big school and get him to represent that school. There is also the case of the armed forces taking over some of the athletes and mass training them to take part in the inter-forces events. It may solve the problem of a young aspiring athlete to find employment, but it does not come as a solution to the prevailing national issue,” Jayaweera said.
The former School Sports’ expert also said that this should be a concerted effort. It should be more of a Junior National Sports Policy where the allied ministries work in unison towards a common goal. He added: “Now according to the present day needs what is required are two fully equipped national sports schools where all promising young athletes could get a focused residential training.
“The coaches who are employed here should be well paid and they in return should put all their focus on the job at hand. The training programmes at the Sports Schools could start early in the morning and go on till around 8.30 and the school can start teaching at 9 a.m. Then the students could be engaged in their studies till 3 p.m. after which they would return to their sports schedule. Then in the evening session they can be back learning other social activities like English speech and etiquette. At the same time each student must be given individual attention.”
He said that in both schools there could be around 800 students in all so that it could be manageable. “Then at the end of the tenure the athletes who graduate to the national level can go on their career path and the others could be diverted back into the schools system as fully fledged Sports Instructors. Then the system will keep yielding results and very soon we will find quality sportsmen and women being churned out on a regular basis.”
Coming back to Minister Aluthgamage, we at this end feel that the Sports Law is no magic wand. It cannot do magic. But if one needs positive results they must begin to act pragmatically.
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