Agony for Sri Lanka SAG Team
Sri Lanka contingent for the South Asian Games was largely in misery following an utterly disorganized preparation for the Games carried out by the Sports Ministry as athletes were left without even proper competition gear as of yesterday while they are due to fly tomorrow to Kathmandu.
For the first time in the last two decades Sports Ministry undertook the travel arrangements, preparing the team and providing kits for a multi sports event, and how that turned up has been chaotic at the end.
Athletics team puzzled
Athletics teams were promised the sun and the moon months ahead of the SAG. Monthly payments for the team, bigger sponsorships for top athletes, payments for coaches, early departure to Kathmandu and training facilities to acclimatize to altitude and weather. But, with two days to the opening ceremony the team hasn’t been given at least flying time, though they were finally told they are flying tomorrow. There were no payments at all, no early departure or training and without their competition kits. Payment for two pairs of shoes which was Rs.40,000 was dragged till the last minute and only half the amount was granted.
An official who worked with the athletics team said that they had to beg several times in front of the officials at Department of Sports Development to get even that, which they were not willing to do but forced to do since the athletes kept asking for the promised payments.
“Since we promised the money earlier, athletes had already paid and ordered their gear and were puzzled about the lack of payment,” said an official.
Coaches not paid
Sri Lanka has a few full time coaches when it comes to Olympic Sports. Most coaches are employed in the tri forces, Universities, schools or private sector. They manage to coach athletes to win international medals while managing their day jobs for a living. Months ahead of SAG, coaches were asked to focus full time on coaching and promised that they will be paid handsomely for their services. But, with two days to go, none of the coaches have been paid a penny and many had conveyed their displeasure and even reluctance to fly with the team, as their services to the country hadn’t been given any recognition by the Ministry officials.
Saman Kumara Gunawardhane, Acting Director (Physical) at the University of Kelaniya, who is also a very senior member and recorder of the Athletics Association, said this could be categorized as the most messed up preparation by authorities for a South Asian Games.
“We were complaining about the National Olympic Committee (NOC) for years, but NOC did a much better job when sending a team for international games’. Sports Ministry who undertook the responsibility for SAG messed up this preparation. Even distributing team kits and gear hasn’t been done properly with only two days for the Games, which sums up how lethargic their entire effort was,” said Gunawardene.
He further said in previous editions something like athletes’ kits and packs were distributed properly in advance to the team, with more than one set of track kits and competition kits, which were of high quality, which wasn’t the case this time around. Even the official kit to wear for the opening ceremony hasn’t been distributed to one third of the Sri Lanka contingent yet.
Unlike previous editions, Director General of the Department of Sports Development was at the center stage leading up to SAG along with his Director of Sports IP Wijerathne. With mesmerizing promises about delivering the best SAG team they hogged the limelight and undertook all the work, but failed miserably in the end.
“DG also cut off funding from many international events for the National team citing they are saving everything for the SAG, and promised athletes will be well taken care of to maximize our medal potential. But what did he do? “We didn’t get any support at all. The only thing they did was changing our sports hostel from Torrington to Sugathadasa,” said an athlete who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reason.
Partying
Even though they could not get anything right in preparing the team, they seem to have thought that organising a big send off at the Hilton Hotel with great pomp was more important than providing athletes with proper gear in time, or paying coaches. But athletes who were well and truly tired after their heavy training schedule leading up to the SAG, had to listen to several pompous speeches until close to midnight, where athletes who had had enough of the speeches proceeded to have dinner without being invited.
Among all the mess ups of non-payments, no gear, cutting off essential officials, medical staff, low quality kits, unnecessary pack of home remedies, cream crackers etc., one thing they got right was arranging to send almost all their officials to Nepal, though many of them did not have any important task to be carried out during the Games. The list which was sent by the DG to former Minister of Sports had requested permission for 32 officials attached to the Sports Ministry to attend the Games, other than for one or two coaches. Since the full contingent list wasn’t released to the media yet, it’s hard to say how many unnecessary officials will make the trip. Also, it’s not difficult to guess which one’s got most of the kickbacks and benefits of these large orders of track kits, bags and gear for the large contingent, which quality-wise cannot be compared to gear supplied in previous editions.
Despite all these setbacks Sri Lanka may end up winning one of their largest hauls of Gold medals in the history of the Games, simply because of India opting out of several disciplines and fielding second string teams. It will be no wonder if these officials subsequently boast and vie with each other to take credit for that after the Games, though those who follow the sports will know what a mess they created in preparing the team for the Games.
