Coach Weerakkody preparing the 100m national star who has no rivals to target the 2024 Paris Olympics:
Sri Lanka has not won a medal in athletics since the 2006 Doha Asian Games when Susanthika Jayasinghe bagged a silver and bronze in the 100 and 200 metres respectively. There is a ray of hope once again after Sri Lanka’s performance at the 60th National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships in Patiala, India where they bagged several medals in their first international since dominating at the 2019 Kathmandu South Asian Games (SAG).
It would be premature to say that Sri Lanka has found the next Susanthika Jayasinghe or Damayanthi Darsha because they were phenomenal talents. There have been many false dawns with some junior national athletes showing great promise but fading away into oblivion.
Among the crop of emerging stars is Sri Lanka’s sprint queen Amasha de Silva who won a silver in the 100 metre dash and the 4x100m relay final in India. Her consistent performance since clocking her personal best (PB) of 11.55 seconds to win her maiden national title in December is an indication that she is poised to achieve great deeds and perhaps even emulate Susanthika Jayasinghe. The 21-year-old Army athlete certainly has the self-belief and determination to target that elusive medal at the 2022 Asian Games while her coach for the past eight years J.S. Weerakkody is also preparing her to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
These are no idle dreams considering her steady progression in the 100m although her sprinting talent was discovered by accident when she was eliminated from the 400m race after a foul start at the Junior Nationals in 2017. “My event was the 400m hurdles. I was not going to do the 100m but after the foul start in the 400m flat race, my coach entered me for the 100m race the next day. I won the race and continued running the 100m thereafter,” recalled Amasha.
The lass from Swarnamalee Balika Vidyalaya, Kandy was at her peak in 2018 winning the 100-200m double at the South Asian Junior Athletic Championship held in Colombo, setting a record of 11.92 in the 100m heats in addition to winning gold medals with the 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams. She went on to win silver medals at the 18th Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Japan clocking 11.71 (100m) and 24.47 (200m). She also represented Sri Lanka at the World Under-20 Athletic Championship in Finland advancing to the semifinals after being placed fifth in one of the heats.
The youngest child in a family of three, Amasha hails from a sporting family. Her father Mahinda de Silva was a bodybuilding champion while her mother Saman Kumari Dunutilleke competed in the 400m hurdles at the Nationals. They gave her all encouragement to do sports.
Silver medallist in the 100m at the 2019 Nationals, she anchored Sri Lanka’s gold medal winning 4x100m women’s relay team at the 2019 SAG but was one of two athletes who were stricken by dengue while the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic also put her career on hold.
“I took a break from athletics and rested to recover after contracting dengue,” said Amasha who joined the Army Women’s Volunteer Corps in October 2019. She was also selected for the Ritzbury ‘Mawbimata Weerayek’ scholarship programme last year and the Sports Ministry’s High Performance pool this year.
“I must thank my parents, family, coach and sponsors Kushil Gunasekara, Ashan Malalasekara and motivators Isuru Samarakoon and Bertal Pinto Jayawardana for encouraging and supporting me,” said Amasha humbled by the goodwill especially from her seniors in the Army, being a second year student of Sri Jayewardenapura University where she is pursuing a degree in Sports Science and Management.
She swept to victory with ease at the National Selection Trial meet, 2021 Nationals and on her debut at the Army inter-unit Championship despite her training being hampered after being quarantined when a family member tested positive for the coronavirus. However, she displayed a steely resolve to be on course to attain her targets this year by achieving a seasonal best 11.59 at the India meet. This was despite an arduous 30-hour journey to India via Doha.
“We are preparing her for the Asian Games in 2022 and the Paris Olympics in 2024. The plan is for her to run 11.40 this year, 11.30 next year and lower it further to qualify for the Olympics,” said her coach Jayamini Weerakkody who is already drawing up a new training schedule to prepare for the Selection Trials scheduled to be held in October.
Lamenting the lack of international competition especially since Amasha is not pushed to the limit by her rivals at home, Weerakkody will also be tweaking her technique off the blocks to improve her performance in the future.
“She has a weakness in start every time. Her block clearance, first step, body angle and arm movement. She improved a little from last year but I could not focus on it during the competition period,” said Weerakkody who is Assistant Director of Physical Education and Sports in the Kandy education zone and has been coaching since 2001.
He also hopes to develop her acceleration in the first 40 metres by improving her posterior strength. “I hope to get the help of weightlifting champion Sudesh Peiris during national pool training at Torrington,” said Weerakkody, a former Stubbs Shield boxer and Junior National champion from Vidyartha College, Kandy.
“There are no pace runners in front of her or to run shoulder to shoulder with her in local competitions. She always wins by a gap of five metres. It’s not good,” said Weerakkody, a former All Island school champion in the 100 and 200 metres.
Weerakkody lauded the ministry’s High Performance programme granting him leave as a government servant to dedicate his attention fully to train Amasha in Colombo. He also has under his wing men’s national number two in the 100m Chamodi Yodasinghe.
A former teacher of Uva National College, Bandarawela, 43-year-old Weerakkody also produced Youth Asian silver medallist in 2015 Darshana Rajapakse (400m hurdles).
Amasha for her part is determined to bring glory to Sri Lanka on the international arena just like Susanthika and Darsha did.
“I will train hard and do my best to win a medal at the Asian Games,” said Amasha whose role models in the sport are Olympic stars Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and American Allyson Felix. At the pace she is progressing, Amasha could also come within sniffing distance of Susanthika’s national 100m record of 11.04.