Sports - Petty politics SAGged it

As they described it “The Mother of all Shows” drew its curtains at the Sugathadasa Stadium last Monday. True enough it kept the war-weary citizenry glued to their televisions through the thick of the fierce battles up north. But at the same time some who were involved in the main mechanism of the spectacle took this as a battle field to settle some old scores and forge some new ones.

This is not an exercise to discredit the people who worked tirelessly through the games in sunshine and rain to make it a success, but to remind them these are not the forums to settle their petty differences and put blotches of muck in their souls which will last forever.

Once while watching the women’s Javelin final the announcer at the state television was broadcasting to the whole world the plight of the coach A.J. Rodrigo who shaped the skills of ‘gold’ medal winner Nadeeka Lakmali. During the event the focus was set upon a slight figure among the gathered at the venue and the broadcaster was blaring out that this is the ‘coach’ of medal hope Lakmalee watching the proceedings from the public gallery as he was not even given accreditation for the games. That did not sound good when it came on the small screen especially of the state television.

When we dug shovel deep we unearthed that the accusation went a little deeper. The organizers had made an announcement that only ten coaches were given the full entitlements at the games which included accreditation and full ‘star class’ accommodation. So the weeding had begun. At the same time A.J. Rodrigo who had four ‘throwers’ under him had been named as the main coach of that sub-section by the national coach. Then came the day of the official photograph and the official beginning of the games in real. Lo and behold when it came to the departure of the official team to the respective hotels Rodrigo was stopped and said that he had no accommodation as only ten coaches were entitled for rooms. The next day Rodrigo further learned that he was not even given an official accreditation to enter the ground. Nevertheless as far as this page is concerned Rodrigo’s real skills were depicted in true colours when Lakmalee won her Javelin ‘Gold’ in tribute to her ‘guru’.

Ironically in the final lot of ‘ten’ Coach Philip Ranjith had only one athlete in the SAG contingent while Susiripala was only a trainer for AAA President Dervin Perera’s athletes and not a coach.

The next episode was more revealing. The National coach Lakshman de Alwis walks into the hotel where the officials were housed only to find that he was not among the top ten coaches to get first choice accommodation and it’s only the next day he was afforded a room when sprinter Damayanthi Dharsha pulled out of the games contingent.

It is also reported the national coach was also deprived of some official gear which even included the games T-shirt which all the other officials wore whilst at the games.

Then C.P. Meemanage who won two gold medals at the SAG was another victim of circumstances. There was a stage when Meemanage was not wanted by the establishment at all, so much so that even he was out of the SAG pool. Then suddenly three of the leading cyclists opt to take a plunge while participating in an overseas assignment and only in the aftermath Meemanage was hastily bundled in, but with a lot of bad blood. The list goes on and on.

The final result was that Sri Lanka fared worse compared to their performance of 1991 where they won 44 gold medals in spite of having a lesser number of events at the games!

Even the good old swimming story would have sounded better if the swimmers took to the sport direct without the parents coming forward to take the first dip.

Yes, the opening and closing ceremonies indeed were something to remember. Though coming from an opposing camp in the AAA hierarchy Sunil Jayaweera and company gave the local and foreign participants a show to remember. But, is that sufficient? What we genuinely feel is that if all heads worked as one for one cause—that exactly for the glory of the nation, we certainly would have done better in our overall performance.