Swimming in the open sea demands an endless reserve of determination and often pushes competitors to their greatest limits of endurance. For Sampath Weerakkody however this challenge has served as an impetus for continued hard work, propelling him all the way from the waters of Ambalangoda to those frequented by the members of our national team.

Sampath Weerakkody

The 25-year-old stands on the cusp of diving into competition at the 2nd Asian Beach Games, in the 5km and 10 km swims, to be held in Muscat Oman in December. For him success at the event would be the perfect conclusion to what has been an extremely gratifying year of competition.

Recently at this year's National Swimming Championships, Sampath glided through to clinch a silver medal in both the 400 meter Individual Medley and 1500 meter swims. This illuminates the rapid progress he is making at the country's highest level as well as his immense potential to develop further.

For Sampath the attraction towards the sport was a natural inclination considering the geography of his birthplace, Ambalangoda. The waters were always a stone's throw away for the youngster and he proceeded to pursue the sport more extensively at his school Sri Devananda College, while being mentored and coached by his older brother Ajith Weerakkody.

Then his development was stymied in 2004 when the Tsunami struck and completely damaged his home, forcing him to move to Colombo to continue his training. "From this time until 2007 I was working with Julian Bolling and I had a lot of success at all of the marathon swims during this time," Sampath reveals.

In fact Sampath is putting things mildly. He dominated the long distance events at the National Swimming Championships, sweeping the 400 meter Individual Medley, and the two mile sea swim for three consecutive years.

This year he has made the move to the newly formed Killer Whale Aquatics club, where his progress and development is being monitored and nurtured by Head Coach Manoj Abeysinghe. "Right now his training is being geared towards the Beach Games, and during this month I want to move him from the pool and into open water," Manoj voices.

His daily training schedule targets both his endurance and speed and usually comprises regular pool sessions along with numerous workouts designed to condition his mental toughness. Manoj exerts that he tries to motivate Sampath to push himself to a point which he thinks is impossible to reach, so that when he eventually does reach it he will feel a deep sense of accomplishment.

Sampath says he is overjoyed to once again be competing for Sri Lanka, something which he did in 2004 when he swam in the SAF Games. "There is a lot of unity because everyone is competing together and is rooting for one cause," he says, while speaking about the chief reason behind his yearning to swim for Sri Lanka.

He says that he wants to keep working hard and pushing himself to greater heights until he can attain his eventual goal of clinching a gold medal at the SAF Games. -David Stevens