Dinesh Weerawansa

Olympic squad not finalised

With only a couple of months away from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Sri Lanka is yet to finalise its contingent for the greatest sporting extravaganza on earth.

Though there is no dispute over the sportsmen and women who have made a direct entry by gaining necessary qualifying standards, a lot of lobbying is going on when it comes to the wildcard entries.

The wildcard card entries are offered mostly to developing and underdeveloped countries in order to ensure a greater participation at Olympic Games. Moreover, it would offer a life-time opportunity to those budding competitors who do not have high level of sporting standards or facilities in their respective countries.

The big question is now on the two wildcard entries Sri Lanka has been offered in swimming. The officials of the national aquatic sports union, the Sports Ministry and moreover the parents of some swimmers, have been canvassing for their respective swimmers. It has now come to a stage where the Sports Minister will have to personally intervene to solve the issue.

Sri Lanka has a golden opportunity to send a male and female swimmer for the forthcoming summer Olympiad in the Chinese capital. Now the big question is who are the most suitable to make use of this opportunity and on what basis we should select them.

When the South Asian Games were last held two years ago in Colombo, there were two Lankan swimmers who were far ahead of the rest on performance. They were Andrew Abeysinghe and Mayumi Raheem. Both have been training abroad and have been making excellent progress to date.

Initially, US-based prodigy Abeysinghe did not get a place in the Sri Lanka team for the 2006 South Asian Games, though his timings were far superior to other male competitors in the Lankan squad. When this injustice was brought to the notice of none other than President Mahinda Rajapaksa, he asked the then Sports Minister to investigate.

It was we who exposed the step motherly treatment to Abeysinghe and the sports loving President took prompt action.

As a result, Abeysinghe was included in the team, but was given only two events. Yet, he proved his excellent skills winning gold medals in both the events he took part. Incidentally, those were the only gold medals won by Sri Lanka in men's events of the eight-nation Games.

In other words, if not for the timely action of President Rajapaksa who saw to it that justice was meted out to 15-year-old Abeysinghe at that time, Sri Lanka would not have won a single gold medal in men's events.

But this highly talented swimmer with a great future, has not got his rightful place to be in the Sri Lanka team for the Olympics. Instead, Heshan Unamboowe has been given the Lankan wildcard entry for the men's events.

We are not questioning the talents of Unamboowe who too has shown great promise. But when one compares the two, Abeysinghe is far ahead of Unamboowe.

Similarly, the local officials are now trying to dump Sri Lanka's golden girl Mayumi Raheem, who won a total of ten medals at the last South Asian Games. She won three gold medals, four silver and three bronze to become the undisputed leader in women's events.

But the local officials are now making an eleventh hour attempt to rob Raheem's rightful place in the Sri Lanka Olympic contingent. They give various reasons from time to time and are staging a well-organised campaign to promote another girl to the slot.

One reason they had given initially was that Raheem is not residing in Sri Lanka. But one should understand that she is compelled to live abroad because her father works as a pilot at a leading airline in Singapore. But she continues to be a citizen of Sri Lanka and is trained by a renowned Australian coach in Singapore.

The officials have also gone to the extent of asking a fresh trial between Raheem and another female swimmer. Among the other reasons adduced by the officials who are trying to oust Raheem are that she has not been here and that she has not swum more than 25m.

We do not understand what the officials really mean. But what the officials have conveniently forgotten is the fact that Raheem won a Medal at the FINA World Cup, which was in a SC pool. She is the only Lankan swimmer who has won a medal at a world class meet.

What our officials and selectors apparently seems to be unaware of is that Raheem has swum LC in Vietnam and Jakarta only two months ago. She has done pretty well there, considering the fact that she was competing throughout her training without tapering for any of the meets and won gold medals in all her pet events and others as well.

The last and the least reason that our officials and selectors have allegedly given was that they were giving an opportunity to youngsters.

They have said that the wildcard entries are offered to give an opportunity to youngsters and that they should not be too worried about performance. True the greatest in Olympics is the participation, not the winning or losing.

But we should make use of this opportunity to plan our future. Be it in swimming or any other discipline, wildcard entries should be used to give an opportunity to our best swimmers who have potential and look future medal prospects.

The only medal prospects for Sri Lanka in swimming right now are only Abeysinghe and Raheem. Though there could be many other Lankan swimmers, none of them would come anywhere near the performance of these two swimmers.

It should not be merely giving an opportunity to a competitor. We should also consider the impact that it would have on the future of Sri Lanka sport If we give more opportunities to Abeysinghe and Raheem, they could well be groomed as future medal prospects at world level.

It looks highly unlikely that these two swimmers would get a fair deal on merit, considering their past performance, recent timings and the quality of training they have been getting. One hopes the highest authorities would intervene and mete out justice. It's not the individual that matters but how profitable such a move would be for Sri Lanka sport.