NOCSL takes Olympic Day celebrations to Nuwara Eliya

By Hishan Welmilla

The National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOCSL) has organised this year’s Olympic Day celebrations to be held in Nuwara Eliya on 24 and 25 June with three Sri Lankans who have brought honour to Sri Lanka.

Jayanthi Kuru Utumpala and Johann Peiris, the first Sri Lankans to successfully summit Mt. Everest, and sprinter Susanthika Jayasinghe, silver medallist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, will be special guests at the annual Olympic Day Run which will also feature around 1,000 schoolchildren representing the Nuwara Eliya District.

Central Province Chief Minister Sarath Ekanayake will be the Chief Guest at the grand occasion while Gayanthika Abeyratne, Sri Lanka’s gold medallist in the 800 metres at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Championship last year, will also be a special guest.

Apart from the Olympic Day Run, NOCSL has line up several programs to mark this historic day.

A Teachers’ Training Program on Olympic Education for physical education teachers and sports officers in Nuwara Eliya and an art competition for school children and a book donation for school children are included in the program of this event.

This was revealed at a special press briefing held at the NOCSL auditorium on Wednesday (20) at the NOCSL headquarters in Colombo.

“The presence of all these celebrated athletes will be inspirational for all the young school kids taking part in our annual Olympic Day Run. It is not every day that you get the chance to meet people who have climbed Mt. Everest or won medals at the Olympics and I hope this will motivate our youngsters to follow in their footsteps,” observed NOCSL President Suresh Subramaniam.

The Olympic Day Run will commence outside the President’s House at 10 a.m. and end at the Cinecitta Grounds. The total distance of the run will be 1.5 kilometres. After the run, there will be a flags’ raising ceremony and the lighting of the traditional oil lamp followed by a one-minute silence in remembrance of fallen heroes.

E-sports to be introduced

The NOCSL also decided to introduce e-sports to local schoolchildren along with the Olympic Day Celebration. The Olympic Day theme of ‘Move, Learn and Discover’ is mainly to encourage people to get active physically. With eSports online, it will also target mental stimulation.

The ‘Learn’ aspect at this year’s Olympic Day event will feature a workshop to educate teachers while more than 1000 schoolchildren will take part in a three-kilometre run to underscore the ‘Move’ feature of the theme. The ‘Discover’ aspect will feature e-sports – learning about a new sport.

“We will strongly promote e-sports and it will be a good opportunity for our kids to find about what competitive team-based gaming is all about,” General Secretary of NOCSL Maxwell De Silva said.

E-sports will make its debut as a demonstration sport at the Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang in August. It will be a medal sport at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. Therefore, introducing this new sport is more important said Maxwell de Silva.

NOSCL celebrated last year’s Olympic Day in Ampara with the participation of over 1500 students from the area.

The history of Olympic Day

The Olympic Day Run is an international Olympic Movement activity promoting mass participation of sports held in June, organised by National Olympic Committees (NOCs).

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was formally established on 23 June, 1894 through the efforts of Pierre de Coubertin promoting competitive sport as a revival of the ancient Olympic Games.

Due to World War II, the Olympic Games had not been held in either 1940 or 1944. The city of London rose to host the Games of the XIV after World War II. In January 1948, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved the idea of Olympic Day to commemorate the creation of the IOC on 23 June, 1894 in Paris, a sort of birthday of the Olympic Movement at the 42nd IOC Session in St Moritz, Switzerland. Olympic Day was held for the first time on 23 June with a total of nine National Olympic Committees (NOCs) hosting ceremonies in their respective countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

In 1987, in an effort to encourage all NOCs to commemorate and celebrate Olympic Day, the IOC Sport for All Commission launched the Olympic Day Run concept with the objective of promoting the practice of participation in sports by men, women, and children from all corners of the world and all walks of life, regardless of athletic ability. The first Olympic Day Run was held in 1987, over a distance of 10km, with 45 participating NOCs. In 2006, there were 161 NOCs promoting Olympic Day Run to their countrymen.

The Olympic Day Run is usually held during 17–24 June by NOCs, with 1.5 km Olympic Day Fun Run, 5 km, and 10 km running activities.