Silver lining

On that mid-December day in the year of 1975 – to be exact the 17th when Mananalage Jayasinghe and his wife Babynona had their fifth child – a daughter would they have ever dreamed that some day this little sibling was destined make a change in their lives – I beg your pardon -- the whole nation itself.: In the early stages young Susanthika never gave any indication of being better than the Jones’. Her least interest was her studies and just like any other child in her little hidden village Athnawela she was an open air person.

Dhammika Wanigasinghe was the first who took Susanthika under her wing while she was schooling. Dhammika recollected the past – “I was then a sports officer attached to the Warakapola Town. There we had these inter-club sports meets in the region and at that time the more prominent runner was her sister Sriyani and Susanthika was the younger sister who tagged along with her. However gradually Susanthika too got into her stride and came to the level of competing at the National School Games level. At that time I remember when she won her first overseas trip I had to attend to the nitty-gritty’s to get her passport.”

However it was another twist of fate that brought Susanthika to what she is now and the man responsible -- none other than the incumbent President of the Sri Lanka Amateur Athletics Association, Maj. Gen Palitha Fernando. He came up with an interesting episode “At that time may be the late eighties or the early nineties when former Army commander Gerry Silva was at the helm and the separatist war was very intense we found it difficult to field an Army athletic contingent and the commander was a very worried man. I was in charge of Army sports at that time.’

The AAA president continued “One day the commander hauled me up and said – Why can’t we build up a strong Army women’s contingent as we are short of male runners? Thereafter we were on the prowl looking around the countryside for fresh female talent. Actually at that time we used to visit almost every hamlet in the country and have a look at these young female athletes in action and even visit their homes and request them to join the Army.

“It was during one of these outings that I first heard about this promising female athlete from Warakapola. I promptly phoned her school and spoke to the principal and she came and visited me with this young athlete. She did very well in her initial trial, but there was one drawback. She was only seventeen years old at that time. In that era no sport had money like at present. I had to take special permission from the commander to keep her in the camp and train her and at the same time to find a sponsor who came up with two thousand rupees a month towards her expenses. Then she began training with the Army team and then gradually she was absorbed into the cadre when the time was up.”

At the army Susanthika with proper diet, training and discipline, blossomed into her own and went on to win her first national championship with a national record.”

As the story goes thereafter Susanthika vacated post in the Army and it was Maj gen Palitha Fernando who intervened to get her out of that situation at that juncture.

From the National title to a place with the Lankan contingent at the Hiroshima Asiad was a short jump for Susanthika. It was her first major international meet and she did raise quite a few eye brows when she returned to the island with ‘silver’.

In 1995, during a meet held in Indonesia, the International Amateur Athletics Federation almost banned her when she tested positive for using the banned substance nandrolene, but, Sri Lanka backed her claim that the test had shown a wrong result: the Amaeur Athletics Federation here, the Sports ministry, politicians, officials, everybody rallied around and a team of doctors pitched in to help and proved to the Toytoa testing labs that there had been errors in the test. She was cleared.

There began the fairy tale. On August 9, 1997, it all began again, this time, in the 200-meters event. The then thirty seven-year-old Jamaican Merelene Ottey who was training with :Lindford Christie was eyeing her third IAAF World Championships title in Athens, Greece. Ottey’s only concern was Zhanna Pintusevych from Ukrain.

However at the end of the race Ms. Pintusevych had won the event with a timing of 22.32 while Susanthika Jayasinghe an unkown Sri Lankan in the second place with a time of 22.39 while Ottey finished third at 22.40. This was the effort that really buoyed Susanthika to the level of a World Class competitor and the rest of the track opponents fearing her.

However in 1999 at the IAAF Grand Prix 200metre Final in Munich, Germany she did not impress much and just took the 8th, but her profile was up and when she arrived in Sydney at the turn of the millennium many especially in Sri Lanka were glued to their television screens at all her attempts. In the pre-final attempts she timed Round 1 - 22.53, Round 2 - 22.54 and 22.45 in the semi-final.
However when she took the track on September ninth for the final the entire country stopped in their tracks to watch her performing and she did give it her best try by finishing third. The Women's 200-Meters: results read -- 1. Marion Jones (United States) 21.84, (Gold Medal) 2. Pauline Davis-Thompson (Bahamas) 22.27 (Silver medal) and 3. Susanthika Jayasinghe (Sri Lanka) 22.28 (Bronze medal).

Nevertheless Susanthika has proved that with sheer talent and dedication there is much that a human being can achieve. For more than a decade she has performed and raked in results at international level, but ironically like Jayasuriya and Muralitharan could she also be one of the last of the Mohicans – Lankans with exceptionally rare talent and will to perform and deliver right there at the top?