Sports

After eleven years of waiting, national swimmer - Govinda Tidball is finally in Sri Lankan enough to do his country proud! Evidently having both a Sri Lankan mother and a Sri Lankan grand father who was even honoured by the State, was considered inadequate criteria to get Sri Lankan citizenship, according to a sexist piece of legislation previously in place.

Prior to the amendment of the ‘Citizenship Act’ a few years ago, only a father could pass on Sri Lankan citizenship to his children. Thus, being the case, Govinda was ineligible for citizenship as his father was an American national, even though he was a resident of Sri Lanka for nearly 20 years now. However, as the Parliament eventually revised this law enabling either parent to pass on citizenship to their offspring, Govinda’s dual citizenship finally fell through this May; the first of his siblings to attain this status in fact.

Born in Nebraska, in the USA, Govinda moved to Sri Lanka with his parents two years after he was born. Schooling here till he was 10 years old, Govinda re-visited the States in 1989, and due to the troubles in Sri Lanka, stayed on there. Whilst in the States, Govinda competed for one of its top Universities, from his Freshman year right up to his senior year and finally having to end his swimming career in the States about seven years ago, when he had fully exhausted his College eligibility.

On the up side however, Govinda had managed to mingle with the other swimmers and had realised the numerous struggles they were faced with, he said. As swimming as a sport is not given much recognition, swimmers have to train using their own personal funds and endure great hardships to train, he added. Due to the lack of support and encouragement on a State level, swimming has become quite a thankless sport, he said. All these are giving it their best effort, juggling their studies and work with their training etc., a little pat on the back, rather than a kick in the ribs would be much appreciated by them, I’m sure. No wonder it’s so hard to develop this sport and recognise the abundance of potential talent in the country said Govinda.

Although the law had been revised at the time of the previous SAF games two years ago, and he even qualified for both the short-course breaststroke and free style events, due to a delay in processing his documents etc., he was unable to participate, said Govinda. This year however, might just be his lucky year!

Just over a month ago, for some reason, I’m quite sure God had a hand in it, I started training even though my papers hadn’t been processed as yet and my citizenship was still far from being finalised. Miraculously though, a few days before my first trial, I my dual citizenship fell through and I was finally an official citizen of Sri Lanka, he said proudly.