• Urges elections before South Asian Athletics C’ship

Former Secretary of Sri Lanka Athletics (SLA) Saman Kumara Gunawardana says that the sport’s domestic governing body yesterday (3) officially conveyed to World Athletics (WA) of the temporary suspension of the registration imposed on the former by Sports Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage, last week.

He said that they had taken a bit of time to undertake the task as they had not wanted to upset the applecart of the Monaco-based global body.

This was in light of three Lankan elite athletes namely javelin throwers Rumesh Tharanga, Sumedha Ranasinghe and women’s 400 m runner Nadeesha Ramanayake, who are due to compete at the World Athletics Championship to be held in Tokyo, Japan from 13-21 September.

“We delayed officially announcing our registration being suspended by the Minister to WA,” he said.

“We did this because we did not want to deprive our three athletes from contesting the World Athletics Championships. We were busy finalising the arrangements for our athletes to participate at the Championship which is around the corner. That is why we took this long to inform our suspension to the world body. Hopefully by the grace of God they should be able to represent the country without any untoward incident.”

He stated that the suspended Executive Committee of the SLA had also finalised the preparations for the Sri Lankan team to take part at the third Asian Youth Games to be held in Manama, Bahrain from 22-31 October, this year.

But, the former Secretary was sceptical of fielding a local contingent for the South Asian Athletics Championship to be staged in Ranchi, India from 23-25 October if by that time there was no duly elected set of office bearers to oversee the sport here.

“I think World Athletics may not tolerate the continued political intervention by the Minister if there are no elections before the South Asian Athletics Championship. So it’s up to the Minister to put the athletics house in order before that event rolls up.”  

Gunawardana, a long-standing official at the SLA said back in 1994 the game’s world controlling body had imposed a ban on Sri Lanka’s membership in lieu of it being taken over by the Sports Ministry.

However, he said that it was too premature to comment on whether Sri Lanka will risk another ban from World Athletics and insisted that any final decision on it would lie with the global body.

The Minister temporarily suspended the registration of Sri Lanka Athletics last week and transferred its functions to his Ministry Secretary Aruna Bandara as the Competent Authority to facilitate the annual election having amended its constitution in keeping with provisions of Sports Law No. 25 of 1973.