Sports Minister intervenes to provide air tickets for junior athletes
The junior national athletic team, who were stranded in Colombo due to an administrative mishap were finally able to take wing to Cali, Columbia after timely intervention by the Sri Lanka Athletic (SLA) President Major General Palitha Fernando and Minister of Sports Roshan Ranasinghe. However, Tharushi Karunaratne missed her flight last Saturday and left yesterday with the second batch.
The seven athletes were to leave for the World Under-20 Athletic Championship 2022 in Colombia which is to be held from August 1 to 6 at the Estadio Olimpico Pascual Guerrero in Cali, Colombia. Seven promising athletes have qualified for the top most event, but the delay of visa and air tickets has flushed all hopes of taking part in the event. Especially the funds for this tour have to be issued by the Sports Development Department headed by Sports Director General Amal Edirisooriya was not issued on time and SLA officials had to face a lot of difficulties before this tour.
the President of SLA Major General Palitha Fernando took responsibility to get a team visa for this tour while Sports Minister finally worked hard to allocate funds to issue air tickets at the last moment.
SLA has made all necessary arrangements to purchase the air tickets and were waiting for the final approval of the Ministry of Sports, which will be funding the team’s airfare. SLA earlier booked the tickets but due to visa delay, it was cancelled, and once again they have to work hard for that.
The funds were to be issued from the Sports Director General but he had already travelled to Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games early and he never arranged to issue these funds. Finally, Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe worked hard on this issue. SLA President Major General Palitha Fernando was keen to come forward to get the visa at the last moment. Even though Saturday is a holiday SLA President coordinated with Visa officials and got visas for the athletes at the last moment while at that time no tickets were available for economy class and Sports Minister came forward to give funds to travel with the Business class tickets.
The team that was supposed to travel to Colombia included Kaveesha Bandara (Men’s 110m Hurdles), Dhanuka Darshana (Men’s 400m Hurdles), Pasindu Malshan (Men’s Triple Jump), Rumesh Tharanga (Men’s Javelin Throw), Hirusha Hashen (Men’s Long Jump), Amesha Hettiarachchi (Women’s 400m Hurdles) and Tharushi Karunaratne (Women’s 400m,800m).
The team travelled to Colombia via Brazil in two batches according to a senior official of the SLA. The first batch comprising, Hirusha Heshan and Kaveesha Bandara left on Saturday accompanied by team coach Badra Gunawardena. However same day Tharushi Karunaratne missed her flight due to a delay of her baggage which was brought by her parents. Tharushi Karunaratne came to the Airport with SLA President on time but her parents were unable to give her baggage on time and as a result, Tharushi missed her first event 800m. This was very disappointing.
The second batch of Amesha Hettiarachchi, Dhanuka Darshana, Pasindu Malshan, and Rumesh Tharanga left the island yesterday accompanied by manager Susantha Fernando and Tharushi Karunaratne who is an athlete of Walla A.Ratnayake MV.