We should be ashamed-NOSL Secretary

General Secretary of the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOCSL), Maxwell de Silva, stated that Sri Lanka should be ashamed of the number of athletes who reached Olympic qualification.

“Our target should be to achieve at least 20 qualified athletes for 2028 Los Angeles Olympics Games excluding cricket. We should be working towards that goal otherwise winning an Olympic medal will be a distant dream,” said De Silva.

Sri Lanka is set to field just five athletes – their lowest since the 1984 Olympics – at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where only three achieved qualification. while two received wild cards.

De Silva reckoned that National Sports Associations (NSAs) should have a clear target of getting their athletes to qualify for Olympics before even discussing medal possibilities, and requested NSAs to work together with a clear plan for 2028.

Sri Lanka were able to field athletes in other sports such as Judo, shooting, and wrestling in the past three Olympics mainly courtesy of wild card entries, which will not be the case this year due to toughened entry standards.

“We were able to get 9 wild card entries during the last three Olympics including five in 2020, that’s the record (for most number of wild card entries in a single Olympic). We got wild cards for Judo twice in a row (in 2016 and 2020),” said De Silva.