Sports

Sports

Here we go round the mulberry bush
By S.R. Pathiravithan
This is the perennial story in this tiny but highly volatile island. Nothing goes without another group shouting foul, and doing everything within their power to bring the incumbent group down. Then the latter, through a very sympathetic wave of votes, gains power and in return what they do is only unleash the same or worse deeds as their predecessors. It keeps on going …..Tit for tat….pitter for patter.

In one of the final changes in last year’s sports calendar in the atheletics arena, the Jayaweera led AAA faction was toppled by the (“SB”) group led by Derwin Perera. At that point we all felt that there was a fresh breath of air and the athletic fraternity could bring in the old glory back, forgetting the fighting in the planes and other age old back stabbing and other misdeeds that brought the sport into the sub level where it lies now.

Alas! Two weeks hence we see that we are still running down the same blind alley. The breath of fresh air now has turned sour and a new wave of under currents has started running through.

Now the new junta has pronounced that three leading athletes:–Susanthika Jayasinghe, Sugath Tillekeratne and Ann Maheshi are not fit enough to be part of the newly formed athletic “Super Pool”. Good. If an athlete is not fit enough to occupy a berth in a given contingent of preferred hierarchy and there are no medal hopefuls then axe them. No problem. But, if there is a hidden agenda behind the axing, then there is a problem.

For instance in the pool for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games Susanthika Jayasinghe, Ann Maheshi, the 4 x 400 runners Anuradha Cooray along with Damayanthi Dharsha are included. Besides, there is going to be a trial held for the Commonwealth Games in February. At that point what would happen if the dropped athletes do better than the incumbent athletes in the so called “Super Pool”? What if they had just stayed this decision until the Trials were held and the athletes who do not perform to the expected standards were dropped?

For instance Damayanthi Dharsha now has dropped her 400 metres event and come on to the 200 metres event. At present she does a 23 secs in the 200m event. The question is – is this timing good enough to rake in a medal for Sri Lanka at the Commonwealth Games?

Though not much publicized this same contingent which included the three dropped players were paid an emolument of Rs.20,000 a month or more. For instance Susanthika Jayasinghe was paid a sum of Rs. 25,000/- plus another Rs. 10,000/- for her trainer. So this ‘paid’ super contingent seems to be nothing new to the athletes. Not only were the athletes, even the coaches coming from the national coach downwards were paid sums running down from Rs.15, 000 to Rs.3000 /- per month. Besides this, when the athletes did well in the Asian Athletic championships in the year 2002 the AAA distributed a sum of 750,000/- among the athletes and barring the year 2003 the athletes were given varying sums of money for their respective achievements.

At the same time it is true that during the era when the controversial athlete S.B. Dissanayake was the minister of sports various gifts including cars and other written and unwritten gifts were given to athletes and these came from the state coffers and not from the AAA coffers. However with SB moving away from the high pedestal of athletics the generous state assistance for the sport ran dry.

Moreover, wasn’t there a time when Rs.500/- per month was given to rural athletes through the “Kreeda Diriya” programme. However that episode fell apart when the respective officers who were in charge of disbursing the allocations could not submit the necessary bills required. Now when this second phase of that failed programme is re-launched shortly would the AAA be able to draw up a foolproof method of distributing the monies so that the second phase also would not succumb to a premature death!

All in all what we are trying to say is that changing pillows for a headache is not the solution. One must explore where the rot set in and attend to the root cause of the anomaly.

Like in cricket, yes, we do have somewhat of a top group of athletes who are performing at top level locally and internationally. But, do we have a steady feeding point that could sustain the sport in the future? Do we have a programme to sustain young athletes in the periphery of jobs, accommodation etc.? They come from the backdrops of the country and once they are in Colombo if they cannot sustain themselves and see a future for themselves they automatically get disheartened unless you come on the levels of Tillekeratne, Jayasinghe and Dharsha? It is a matter of fact that every aspiring athlete can not achieve that status, but, to have healthy competition one must have a second and third string of competitors who are on the verge of selection. However, if the second and the third string cannot sustain themselves over a given period of time the entire structure collapses and the whole episode will be back to square one.

Now there is no time to ponder or have ‘thamashas’ over ill planned and trivial issues. At this juncture what we need is action and it should be meaningful action and not one ‘god father’ taking over from another.

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