Don't our Athletes deserve better?

Duncan White, Olympic Silver medaliist. Nagalingam Ethiriveerasingam, Sri Lanka’s first Asian gold medallist. Lucien Rosa, another Asian champion. Of more recent vintage we have the names of Susanthika Jayasinghe, Damayanthi Darsha, Sugath Thilakaratne and Sriyani Kulawansa, It is clear that Sri Lanka have had a rich heritage of athletics spanning several decades and can boast a pantheon of athletic greats. To further illustrate this point, Sri Lanka has generally outperformed their much larger and well resourced neighbours and several of the South Asian athletics records belong to our very own countrymen and women.

However, despite all these exceptional circumstances athletics has long been a sport that has lacked adequate support both resource-wise and financially and in most cases we can say that local athletes have achieved exceptional feats not because of the hand they have been dealt with but despite it. It is a well known secret that in several cases athletes have had to fund their own way into international competitions and that even when they compete they often lack the required support and facilities to perform at their very best.

This brings us to the present, where after a period of relative anonymity on the international athletics arena, Sri Lanka seem to be producing a new batch of talented athletes. Chief among them are Yupun Abeykoon and Nilani Rathnayake, who will be representing Sri Lanka at the Olympics in the Men’s 100m and Women’s 3000m steeplechase respectively. What is notable is that these two athletes achieved their qualification on basis of their world rankings and not through any regional quotas. In addition, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention athletes such as Ushan Thiwanka, Amashi De Silva, Kalinga Kumara, Sumedha Ranasinghe as well as several others who potentially missed out on Olympic qualification due to the lack of opportunities to participate in international events . Unfortunately, even though it may seem like athletics is turning a new page on the track, many of the same problems still persist.

In photos circulated in social media recently, we could see athletes being forced to sleep on airport chairs and even after arriving back in Sri Lanka they were forced to quarantine in Matara instead of the earlier promised Sugathadasa stadium, which could hamper the Olympic preparations of Nilani Rathnayake. There is also the unfortunate case of Ushan Thiwanka, who broke the longstanding national high jump record and at one point was ranked 3^rd in the global 2021 rankings (Still has the 14^th highest performance of any athlete in 2021), but missed out on Olympic qualification due to not having enough ranking points. He was supposed to participate in a Kazakhstan athletics competition with the target of reaching the rankings threshold but due to visa issues was unable to take part, and the governing body was unable to arrange for his participation in any other international events before the deadline. While there are certainly mitigating circumstances given the global health situation, it was still a rather unfortunate incident that could lead to disillusionment among not just the athlete in question, but on a larger scale. The incidents highlighted above are not just isolated occurrences but have been an unfortunate patten that has been present over a number of decades.

While this article brings attention to athletics, these issues are not restricted to athletics but are prevalent in several other sports, with athletics merely being an ideal case study of a more wide ranging problem. The more pertinent question is, “What is the solution?”. A popular answer, especially on social media is to divert funds from our chronically underperforming cricket team into quote unquote “more deserving sports”. However, the brutal fact of the matter is that other local sports simply lack the mass commercialization of cricket (and to a lesser extent, rugby). However, that does not mean that the shabby treatment received by other athletes is acceptable by any means. There is an urgent need for a well defined framework through which athletes are able to participate in international competitions and get access to better facilities and training. One possible avenue is through scholarships at foreign universities, which have indeed benefited some athletes such as the aforementioned Ushan Thiwanka.

While I profess that I certainly am not an expert, it is an unavoidable fact that historically athletes have more often than not being treated rather shabbily, and I can only sincerely hope that things will take a turn for the better and our local athletes and stars from other sports get the recognition, support and opportunities that their talent deserves.