Final Decision on National Championship to be taken tonight

A special meeting between Sri Lanka Athletics officials and National Institute of Sports Medicine officials will take place at 7.00 p.m. tonight to make a call on the National Athletics Championship 2020, which appears to be the only possible National level athletics championship this year.
Some key areas that will be taken up for discussion during the meeting are dates, measures to ensure safety of athletes, providing continuous training facilities, testing and health guidelines. SLA is keen on conducting the event before 31 December, as athletes’ performance at the National Championship will ensure they receive 100 bonus points for world athletics rankings, which will ultimately help them to increase their chances of qualifying for world events, including the Olympic Games.
Since World Athletics (WA) rules allow only one National Championship per year, Sri Lanka will have to conduct the 2020 event before the end of the year, which will give SLA the opportunity of conducting two National Championships before the 2021 Olympic qualification deadline next year, which will give athletes a better chance to increase their ranking points.
“Due to WA bonus points we are keen on conducting the Nationals this year, even if that means we will have to take some extreme measures. We may have to keep changing the dates of the Nationals from first week of December to end of December, or we may have to keep athletes in hostels in bio secure bubble and keep testing athletes, coaches and even technical staff,” said National Coach Y.K. Kularathne.
“If the curfew is relaxed, we can conduct the Nationals even by limiting participation and strictly adhering to health guidelines, if not, we will have to take a decision early and release athletes for off-season training. I know they are frustrated,” added Kularathne.
What happened so far
Athletics came to standstill from last March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and during this time Sri Lanka had failed to conduct at least one National competition, though many countries which had far worse COVID-19 problems with thousands of positive cases and many deaths, were able to resume competitions.
National athletes had trained and were in peak condition to face trials on three occasions this year, but could not perform since sudden quarantine curfew resulted in the trials being postponed each time. They first peaked targeting the National Trials in April, which was postponed due to island wide curfew imposed due to first wave of COVID-19. Then after the situation eased down SLA decided to hold the National trials from 25-27 October when the Minuwangoda incident occurred. Following a request from athletes they decided to hold Performance Test for National Athletes on 26-27 October, but that too got cancelled due to curfew being imposed and Sugathadasa Stadium being out of bounds.
Just after cancellation of the Performance Test, Director of Sports I.P. Wijerathne held a meeting with some of the National Athletes who were occupying the Sports Hostel along with the National Coach, and decided to conduct the Performance Test on 29 and 30 October, but it was obvious that won’t be possible with the escalating situation, which ultimately resulted in another cancellation.
Athletes in dilemma
Apart from competition dates, athletes have several other problems to deal with as authorities have failed to ensure continuous training facilities with several stadiums shut down by PHIs throughout the country even in curfew free areas. Director of National Institute of Sports Medicine Dr. Lal Ekanayake has been doing everything possible to discuss the matter with relevant health authorities to keep stadiums open at least for national athletes. However, national athletes living in the Gampaha District continued to be affected and were confined to their homes during the entire month of October.
Meanwhile, athletes also faced severe economic problems as most of their families’ income has been affected by the pandemic. Some also face the problem of not having a proper place to stay. The temporary places where athletes lived for training purposes had asked them to vacate the premises or stay indoors for a while by their landlords, since they had been going out for training every day.
“I’m extremely disappointed about the situation right now. We could have seen some impressive performances as our athletes were in good form leading to the trials. Our athletes face several problems: training facilities have been closed, gyms closed and decision-making process by authorities has been slow. We should address these and let our athletes train without any hassle if we are to expect better results in a competition,” said President of AASL, Maj.Gen Palitha Fernando.