Sports

Sports

Pros and cons of athletics with a pioneer
By S. R. Pathiravithana
One of the doyens of Sri Lankan athletic coaching K.L.F. Wijedasa feels that the much-loved sport is now on the right course. The former chairman of the national athletic selection committee said “For awhile all the focus was only on the national athletes and the other graders were almost forgotten, but for the past year or so I see that they have developed a very promising programme for junior athletics and now if they could sustain in a workable manner it would benefit the sphere of athletics immensely”.

It’s no secret that Lankan athletics has been on the wane in the recent past and the medal raking especially in the Asian circuit which was more than a habit was becoming more of a sporadic occurrence. The Sunday Times in its quest to find out more on this issue sought the viewpoint of the coach who became the ‘guru’ to athletes of the calibre of Sunil and Badra Gunawardena, Vijitha Wijesekera, Kosala Sahabandu, Surangani Wijendra and Prasad Perera, to name a few. Wijedasa explained … “Going back to the beginnings of meaningful athletics in the country, Educationists like P. de S. Kularatne wanted a good athletics programme instituted in the country. However they found out that a mass scale programme would be impractical as a result of the vast numbers that would be involved and they toned it down to the Public Schools Meet system. What they instituted was to have a group meet and have the top performers coming over to take part at the public schools meet.

It was a workable system and athletics was gathering momentum. Ironically down the line this public schools system was done away with and the national schools games system was introduced.

“Now for instance you see the National School Games taking the discipline of the long jump. For this event you may have 72 prospective jumpers. Taking a minute to finish a single jump it takes you 72 minutes to have even the second round so once you warm up, jump the first round, the athlete is all worn down when the time for the second round arrives. This is a very salient point. What I say is that when it comes to the national level there should only be a handful of competitors left. Only then would you be able to harness the best in them.

“At the same time you can take the present coaching system. Now what is happening is that they take a youngster and start intensive training on him for certain disciplines from a very tender age, may be eleven or twelve, as a result what happens is that when you reach the senior grade at 18-19 the young athlete is burnt out.

“What happens in other countries is they too spot talent at a very young age, but they nurture him in an all-round manner. For instance track events, gymnastics and swimming become compulsory events. Whatever the discipline the coaches must ensure the youngster who is very talented is nurtured and his talent harnessed productively. “However now I have seen that the athletic hierarchy has mooted a system where they have appointed head coaches to disciplines like the sprint, middle distance running, jumps and throws under a director of coaching.

At the same time they also have introduced set standards to achieve. All these methods are good for the well-being of the sport. But it should be implemented in a workable manner so that the young athletes can reap the full benefit out of them. Then once they reach the top level they must find ways to pursue their further training abroad. For instance you see most of the Chinese athletes are at present training in the USA. Then our own high jumper Manjula Kumara, thanks to former athlete Edthriweerasingham, is also training in the USA.

Then speaking about the athletes going underground and some opting not to come back after their training careers Wijedasa explained “Why is that happening? It is because the prospective athlete does not know what is in store for him after his career in athletics is over. So whatever the chance they come across to seek greener pastures they jump at it. This type of activity has many negative factors. Then how do we prevent this from taking place? For this the athletic management should seek avenues of securing employment or in any other manner to ensure their future so that they would spend their after-athletic life comfortably.

However in this passage the role of the coach also plays a major part. Besides the normal training on the field, the coach should be a mentor for the young athlete and he also should make ways of developing the athlete believe in himself and his post-athletic life”

Then the master coach gave another piece of his thinking. He said “About a decade ago I pointed out that we also must develop a Junior SAF games. This is well within the ideologies of the SAF games which was developed to boost the available talent in the region on the same lines like the under-19 World Cup for cricket. However this suggestion of mine was not pursued by the authorities”.

Finally K.L.F. Wijedasa parted with another thought. “We talk a lot about athletics and what it could do for the country. But, how many facilities do we have that is made especially for athletics in Sri Lanka? We only have the facilities at the Sugathadasa Stadium and at Independence Square. Wouldn’t it be useful if we can build another facility outside Colombo where the athletes could put the facilities to good use. For instance in athletics high altitude training is a necessity. If we can have such a facility out there, it would be of much benefit for the athletes as well as provide another place that we could conduct meets outside the capital city.”

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