Comment

All swimmers treated equally now

Swimming has been a sport which has always been marred with controversial selections. It's the influential parents of the competitors who actually swim off their field and use various tactics to get their children in various teams.

This situation had been still worse when it comes to big events such as the Asian Games or South Asian Games. This has deprived many talented swimmers an opportunity of representing their country. All these years, it was hard for a swimmer without any influence or high contacts to get in to the national team purely on merit. But not anymore!

Since the new interim administration of the Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union (SLASU), headed by Minister Maithripala Sirisena, took office, talented and rural swimmers across the country have got a fair deal. Without any influence or connections, they have an opportunity of making it to any team purely on their performance.

Minister Sirisena, a truly village product from Pulathisipura who is a heavyweight in the political arena, is well aware of the malpractices and injustice which had taken place in the national aquatic sports union from time to time. That was precisely why he took immediate action to put a permanent end to selection processes, often manipulated by influential parents of some swimmers.

Irrespective of impressive performances by rural swimmers who have little or no connections or access to the selection committees and swimming officials, it was the sons and daughters of influential parents who finally found places in the national team on most occasions.

But Minister Maithripala Sirisena did not tolerate that nonsense and ugly selection processes. He found the reasonable deal for all by instructing the selectors to be impartial and ordered to make all selections purely on merit.

That was exactly why we saw a lot of rural swimmers getting opportunities to compete in the big league in recent times. If we had practised the same old method of selections, we would never have found these future stars of Sri Lanka swimming.

In implementing this success story and revolution in Sri Lanka aquatic sport, Minister Sirisena had an able lieutenant to assist him.

He is none other than Kiran Atapattu, the well-known business tycoon who has now become a household name in the sports circles too. Besides his role as the Secretary of the SLASU, Atapattu held the identical position at the Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union under the interim administration of Dr. Maiya Gunasekera.

Atapattu has been a strict disciplinarian. A man with tremendous experience as a successful and award-winning businessman, Atapattu could not be bought and as a result, those so-called influential parents could not tamper with the selection process anymore. Apparently, there have been several parents who were ready to do anything and everything to get their children in when it comes to team selections, but Atapattu has made sure that a clean selection process takes place at all times.

As the Secretary of the SLASU, Atapattu, has to implement regulations, which sometimes is a difficult job due to unnecessary interference of certain people. Nevertheless, without being afraid of those pressures, he continues to carry out his duties boldly according to law, thus extending his fullest support to his President Minister Sirisena.

As Atapattu has described in a recent media interview, he may not be popular among those dominating parents since he has been strictly observing rules and regulations of the SLASU constitution and selection process.

He too has admitted that there have been unnecessary interference of parents who disturb his work. But Minister Sirisena has stood firmly with the SLASU Committee and maintained discipline and fair play at times.

More importantly, Minister Sirisena and his Secretary Atapattu and team, have been able to take swimming to outstations, ending the dominance of Colombo students. They pioneered in taking swimming to provinces. Before they embarked on this project of popularising swimming in the outstations, the sport was confined only to the so-called elite class of Colombo.

Even most of the former swimming officials paid an extraordinary interest to the swimming clubs in Colombo, ignoring the development of the game in the provinces and the outstation clubs in toto. As a result, it was only people who could afford were engaged in swimming, letting the rural talent go down the drain.

The efforts taken by the present SLASU Committee to promote aquatic sports in the outstations are commendable. It is the current committee which gave equal recognition to outstation swimming clubs and provided them with facilities. That enabled several outstation clubs with talented swimmers to be developed on par with Colombo clubs.

Praiseworthy efforts have been made by Minister Sirisena and his team to develop swimming clubs in Dambulla, Polonnaruwa, Gampaha, Puttalam and Trincomalee. As usual, they too faced financial hardships in supporting outstation clubs but they never looked back.

Minister Sirisena and Secretary Atapattu teamed up to find necessary finances to keep their outstation swimming promotion program going. With the urge of fulfilling long-felt national cause, they started collecting funds and finally reached the target of pumping Rs. Four million to the SLASU coffers. That was mainly due to their political and business backgrounds which have turned put to be a blessing for Sri Lanka's national governing body for aquatic sports.

It was due to their untiring efforts that so many top class swimmers were identified and brought to national level to bring glory to Sri Lanka in the international arena.

The emergence of little-known swimmer Gihara Amarasinghe of Southlands Balika, Galle to win a silver medal at the South Asian meet is a classic example of their success story in promoting the sport at rural level.

Recently, the SLASU picked some talented swimmers from outstations for training in China - for the first time in history the sport here.

Their success story is a good eye-opener for some of the officials who live on association funds. At a time most of the elected as well as interim committee members are acting in irresponsible manner wasting funds of their associations, the SLASU Committee has served in an exemplary manner.