What is ailing our sports?

A new government, a new minister, we hoped for greater things in our sports. However, gradually we, the sports lovers in this country, are realising that it is not so easy to change the corrupt culture that dominates our sports administration.

Just like our political culture, sports administrators are there for a lifetime, holding office in sporting bodies for a good part of their lives. Their individual sport may keep stagnating, even go down, may not even qualify in international meets, but the officials go on!

Many laws have been brought to limit the years and the number of times an individual may hold a position in a sporting body, but these individuals have fooled the system; one year the guy is secretary, next year president, the year after a committee member and fourth year back as secretary and so on; they keep going!

But the sport standards in the country keep going down; last year, Sri Lanka did not win a single medal at Olympics/Asian games. Much smaller and poorer countries performed better.

From what we observe, our sports officials do not bring any prestige or honour to the sport, on the contrary, their ‘status’ is only because they hold a position in a sporting body! That is how lowly these individuals are.

If we look at the National Olympic committee, we see individuals holding positions for nearly 10 years! The pathetic state of this organisation can be assessed from a former President, who after being President of the NOC for many years, became the Secretary Defence; the rest is history!

There are sports officials whose income is unexplainable. In most countries, no respectable organisation will open their door to these people. In this country, not only do they enter sporting organisations but end up becoming presidents and secretaries!

We need to raise our awareness and try to attract better sorts of people to our sports administration.

 Upali Kuruppu