Sri Lanka sports followers are up in arms and are even contemplating going to higher authorities to take to task the appointment of a manager they say has a questionable track record and less competent to be put in charge of the country’s junior athletics team ahead of two major events in July and August this year.
Parents of young athletes told the Sunday Observer that the appointment of Anil Weerasinghe as the custodian of junior athletes was not in keeping with the norms of promoting healthy encouragement that budding sportsmen and women need in a highly competitive and demanding era.
Weerasinghe’s credentials were brought into questioning at the Asian Junior championships that concluded in Colombo yesterday where the competitors were also left without water and electricity at their hostel.
He is also listed to accompany the athletes to Japan for an Asian meet in July and the World Junior meet in Finland in August. One of the main grouses lined up against Weerasinghe is that in 2013 he did very little or nothing to ensure that one athlete, Sarangi Silva a young girl from Sri Sumangala College in Panadura, was able to compete and probably take custody of a gold medal as two of her events, the long jump and the relay overlapped at the South Asian Junior meet in India. According to an official in the athletics governing body of Sri Lanka, it should have been the manager’s duty, in this case Weerasinghe, to take responsibility and ensure that the athlete (Srangi Silva) was able to compete in both the long jump and relay without a conflict. Sarangi Silva made three long jump attempts and raced away to join the relay team. When she returned to complete the long jump, the winners had already being decided. Weerasinghe is said to be having the support of some influential officials in the athletics governing body for reasons best known to them.
The Sunday Observer also learns that Weerasinghe had failed in an attempt to procure the signatures of athletes that took part in the Junior Asian Championships to support his credentials. In another major blunder committed during the concluded junior meet in Colombo and attributed to the lapse on the part of Weerasinghe, the athletes numbering 80 were left high and dry without water and electricity at their hostel at the sports ministry in the heart of posh Colombo 7.
A journalist had to intervene to alert the authorities on behalf of the athletes. One head rolled as the Director General of the Department of Sports Development was removed from his post.