Down the memory lane
The front cover of the souvenir Pic by: Amila Gamage
Marking a milestone of 100-years of Sri Lankan athleticism, Sri Lanka Athletics (SLA) released a heavy volume of precious recollection of book titled – 100-years of Sri Lanka Athletics.
The book, touching from then to now, features the most extraordinary feats to the most recent victories.
Starting from the first-ever medal won by Sri Lankan, Duncan white, to the recent records, including what gripped the global headlines last August courtesy to Dinesh Priyantha, the records features a wide-ranging collection of statistics and records.
The souvenir, compiled by Saman Kumara Gunawardena, SLA’s official record keeper, offers a substantial amount of statistics to records, the heartbeat of the sport.
The 398-page recollection on top of statistics and records also walks the readers through various moments of athletes’ action through coloured and black-and-white pictorials. But it is the black-and-white collection, beatifically bringing back the primitive part of the track-and-field, stands out.
In the early parts of the book, a medal table covering the three age categories and major meets is presented.
Accordingly, the nation only has two medals, both silvers, from the biggest sporting extravaganza of Olympics. World championships has a solitary silver, the nearing Commonwealth Games (CWG) has one each from gold, silver and bronze. The-postponed Asian Games stands with ten gold’s. However, the best comes from the South Asian Games, where the Lankan athletes are bragging with 116 gold medals alone.
Duncan White, a name etched in history
From the junior category, they have fared best in South Asian Championships with 25 golds. In the last age group of Youth, it is in the Asian Youth Championships, the pick of them aggregating nine medals, in total.
Majority of the achievements of the athletes registered at foreign competitions are reproduced through high-volumes of pictorials. This ranges from Carl Van Geyzal, the first Ceylonese to compete at the Olympic Games (1928) to sprint Queen Susanthika Jayasinghe to CWG medallist Sriyani Kulawansa and to the present day Yupun Abeykoon.
Those aside, it also consists of articles from the President of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, Nagalingam Ethirveerasingam, an Olympian and the island’s first-ever gold medallist at the Asian Games. The write-ups also extend to personal accounts by various technical officials.
The late legendary Lakshman Kadirgamar
The book also provides insights and information on scores of local (schools and national-level) and international meets. The editorial team has gone out-of-it’s-way to trace and track all the facts-and-figures crucial in compiling this memorabilia.
They have in fact have done a tremendous job in gathering the moments that matter, going in-depth and giving colour to the reader. The exact information covers from the pre-modern days to the modern days.
This book, fittingly for the centenary celebration for the sport with the most number of disciplines, is a perfect way to pay rich tribute for all it’s athletes, because of whom, this sport is alive and kicking.
It is also an impressive way of reflecting on a retrospection, traversing back the years, and uniting the great and grand moments in one compilation.