Local coaches unreasonably oppose three productive foreign counterparts
Coaches play an important role in athlete's progress, but they too have a competition among themselves
In the ongoing battle between local and foreign coaches, and locals succeeding their foreign competitors, the fired foreign trio had still made a case to remain on voluntary and unpaid basis till end of April, to make sure their athletes participate in the competitions, but that too, had been terminated, the Sunday Times learns.
Despite all these pleas, including from their students, the Director General to the Ministry of Sports has remained stubborn that the foreign resource personnel contracts cannot be renewed.
“They still made a case to remain. For that, they would have to stay back and coach the athletes till the end of April, but the ministry did not want to,” said a highly placed Sri Lanka Athletic official, wanting to be unquoted, as being named can upset their plans for the future.
“We requested, but they didn’t want to. Due to various reasons, finance could be one reason. The rest I don’t know,” he added.
He maintained that he had no knowledge, refusing to comment more and declined to divulge what the plan is.
But the case is handsomely in favour of the foreign coaches, one of them, a Cuban – Luiz Miranda – bragging of producing nearly 10 triple and long jumpers. But the real problem is piling because no replacements have been named and the local athletes are reluctant or even against going under Lankan coaches.
The foreign trio have seemingly won the heart and minds of their charges, so much so it has even prompted their students to make a plea to retain these resource personnel. In spite of requests pouring in from these quarters, none of these had convinced and sufficed for the sports ministry to consider the case.
The main reason is understood as local trainers unhappy and unwilling to release their students into foreign hands. The other coaches – Sergio Manual Rodriguez, another Cuban, and Dan Mukochi, a Kenyan sprint coach – have all got to pack their bags after what seems a successful stint in the country.
The Sunday Times also found that while a selected bunch of local trainers in the form of problematic elements have been orchestrating and winding this up, the executive committee is still backing overseas hands, though on a futile note.
The local authorities’ (the sports ministry) complaint has been that no medals were won at the Asian Games. One of their contracts came to a close in the latter part of last month. Miranda, the jumping coach from Cuba, in his seven-year-long stay, had performed well and produced top athletes as well.
But though the athletes had fared well here at home, they failed to maintain the momentum and perform in overseas competitions. They trained well to very high standards when they went to the Asian Games. But when they went there, they underperformed, in every aspect. But to see the distance they cleared here, had they repeated the same there, they would have won a medal, explained the official.
“They don’t clear the distance they do in Sri Lanka. So, it goes as a failure and this is the situation. In the case of the sprint coach, he came in December 2019, and in March we went into a lockdown. After that there was no training going, hence how can you perform? How can you produce results,?” the official questioned.