Unity can help produce Olympic stars – NOC chief
Suresh Subramanium
Sri Lanka can proudly boast of having produced a gold medal in boxing at the 1938 Empire Games from Barney Henricus, a world champion in billiards by M.J.M. Lafir (1973) and winning the Cricket World Cup in 1996 under Arjuna Ranatunga while athletes Duncan White (1948 London) and Susanthika Jayasinghe (2000 Sydney) provided the silver lining at the Olympics.
But these feats are few and far between, lacking in consistency while fans and administrators are deluded in a false sense of achievement that everything is hunky dory with sport in the country when Sri Lanka win a heap of medals at regional events.
National Olympic Committee (NOC) President Suresh Subramanium put things in perspective when asked how Sri Lanka could produce Olympic level athletes beyond the South Asian (SAG), Asian and Commonwealth Games.
“Unfortunately we are going by our past. That’s the Sri Lankan mentality. We are still celebrating the 1996 World Cup victory. We are still talking about Susanthika. We should be able to do something today. We must respect the past but we have to have a future plan,” said Subramanium, who transformed the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA) into a sustainable organisation using his business acumen and visionary zeal.
The SLTA Vice President who has the knack for picking the best brains in the business, bolstered the NOC Marketing Department by appointing Rohantha Athukorale as chairman Sponsorship Committee of the NOC.
“He is the last word in marketing. He is giving us so much. He is handling things professionally using athletes during the COVID-19 campaign. We got to get the best guys,” said Subramanium, who believes in excellence shunning favouritism for meritocracy.
“It is very unfair. From the early 40s this favouritism has been going on. It’s very sad,” lamented Subramanium, recalling the incident of sporting icon Summa Navaratnam being overlooked for the 1948 Olympics because of politics.
“Summa was considered the fastest man in Asia. He had done 10.4 (seconds). In the Olympics which he was barred, the winner got 10.3. Summa ran on grass. He would have run faster,” he said citing one example.
“It is up to the individual presidents (of associations) and the authority to see within and ask ‘Are you doing the right thing? Can you go back home and sleep when you did something wrong?’. If you are frightened of your conscience, you won’t do that,” he said.
“If somebody comes and tells you that I had supported a friend, I would have vouched that no way I would have supported. I would have looked after the friend’s interest so that nobody undermines that girl or boy. There is no way I will support them to ride over someone. It is pure merit,” he stressed.
He called for unity among the authorities governing sport in the country when asked what challenges he faced since taking over as NOC President two years ago.
“To me to succeed in sport or anything, there must be unity. So the pillars that I am talking – NOC, national federations and the Ministry of Sports – these three must work in unison. Unfortunately this was not happening but we have come out of that. If you think you are big, I am fine. The problem is the moment you say you are the biggest man, you don’t respect the other. That is wrong. We have to respect each other,” he said.
“At the end of the day, promotion of sport is done by the federations not by the Olympic Committee. To do the promotion of the sport, it is supported by the ministry. We (NOC) are there to pick up the elites and we have to work with them. We are not there to help in grass root level. We have been successful in sending some of our athletes for training overseas. That is what we have to concentrate. We have to set up a proper environment so that the athletes’ interest is only to come and train,” he explained.
Subramanium denied that they interfered or were overbearing on the national associations.
“The road is never easy. Always issues are there, it is how you look at the issue. You have to be more broadminded, more positive. We have written to all federations to nominate their top athletes. Then when we get involved, top athletes must either be above SAG level or Asian level or must have international ranking. Then we start supporting,” he said.
“There are over 30 athletes we are supporting for which we have to get funding. This is the reason I launched the magazine (GoodSport), to give prominence to these athletes because nobody knows about them. Now they only know the cricketers,” said Subramanium, a former national tennis player.
Asked about the NOC’s role in identifying talent and sponsoring athletes to attain High Performance, he said: “We had set up for the first time, a high performance committee led by Asanga (Seneviratne) and we put various other athletes in that committee. We have a few coaches also. It is not an easy task because we have to go back to national federations.”
The NOC chief also felt Sri Lanka should look beyond flagship sports such as athletics and swimming.
“These are tough sports. It’s like if I’m going to tell you in tennis in 10 years we are going to produce a Wimbledon champion, I am only telling you a lie. It is a very difficult sport to climb up the ladder to get to the best 500 in the world. It is not easy especially for a country like Sri Lanka where we don’t have many international events to compete,” he said making a case to focus on other sports.
“There are certain sports where it is not so difficult. In equestrian a girl (Mathilda Karlsson) qualified. In gymnastic we are fairly certain Milka Gimhani will qualify for the Olympics. Nobody thought about it before. Not that we can’t. We can, but you have to work with them. There must be a very good understanding. You have to work together. We must have a common goal and somebody has to overlook that,” he said.