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Worth
his weight in gold Significantly, the village boy, who is now worth his weight in gold, achieved the Commonwealth Games honour in Melbourne, Australia while the team that Sri Lanka beat on that memorable March 17, 1996 to win the World Cup in one-day cricket was also Australia. While
the whole of Sri Lanka overflowed with pride and joy as expressed
by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Polonnaruwa itself rose again to
its ancient glory. But the Vithanage home in a village of Polonnaruwa
did not have anything like a telephone and the proud mother Dharmaseeli
needed to come to a neighbour’s house for this telephone interview
with The Sunday Times. Chinthana, is the second of four boys in a marginalized and largely dispossessed family. Their father, a music teacher in the village school, died when Sri Lanka’s latest sporting hero and Commonwealth champion was just five years of age. From that point, it was a painful hand-to-mouth struggle for the mother to provide for the four boys. She told us how she earned a living by making hoppers and stringhoppers for a nearby boutique while picking up cut-pieces from a garment factory to make dresses for an additional income. Melbourne might be something like a goldmine for the family. When Chinthana lifted himself to the top place in the 62 kg category, he also put himself in line for the one-million-rupee reward offered by President Rajapaksa for any athlete who wins a gold at the Commonwealth Games. With that and other rewards or sponsorship, Chinthana and his family would now be able to lift themselves out of poverty and to a better standard of living. In
her moment of glory, mother Dharmaseeli also recalled Chinthana’s
childhood—the early school days at the Swamunna school near
the military camp before he got a Grade Five scholarship to Royal
College in Polonnaruwa. After his school education, the well-built Chinthana joined the Sri Lanka Air Force and worked there for some time but he moved out because he wanted to concentrate fully on his weightlifting career. He went to Kandy for special training but till he left for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, he received only a small training allowance. Thus, the village lad had to virtually by himself climb every mountain and search every sea until he found his dream in Melbourne last Friday. While training, the poverty of the early childhood continued to torment Chinthana but he was full of determination and dynamism. He could not afford to buy a powder that was required for the grip but he managed with some raw cement till a benefactor helped him to buy the powder, his mother told us yesterday. It was a long wait for Sri Lanka and for Chinthana. Sri Lanka won its last Gold Medal in 1994 when rifle shooters Pushpamali Ramanayake and Mali Wickremasinghe emerged first in their category. Four years ago, at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Chinthana was placed fourth in his category. Despite the struggle, the obstacles and the lack of encouragement, the 25-year-old Chinthana drew from all his inner resources and solid grounding that his tough village life had given him to carry himself and his country to the glory of a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games. |
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