Teenage athletes set to travel without officials for Commonwealth Youth Games

US embassy rejects visas for officials    

By Reemus Fernando  

The last-minute attempts by the Sports Ministry and Sri Lanka Athletics to send the full track and field contingent for the Youth Commonwealth Games were found futile yesterday after the US embassy rejected visas for the three officials including respected athletics coach Anura Bandara who famously guided the likes of Sugath Thilakaratne to stand head to head with world forces in athletics.

The US embassy has granted visas for the five teenage athletes but denied the officials visas to transit in New York en route to Trinidad and Tobago where the international multi-sports event is scheduled to commence on August 4.

Sri Lanka Athletics has now sought to send the track and field team with the beach volleyball officials.

The team were set to leave early morning today but they had to abandon that plan due to the delays in obtaining their visa documents.

Bandara was the official manager cum coach of the track and field team. He was selected after two of his charges including medal prospect Ayomal Akalanka were selected from Ambagamuwa Central.

Ambagamuwa Central athlete Shalani Hansika (long jump and 400m hurdles), Vijitha Central Dickwella high jumper Nilupul Pehesara, Wickramabahu National School, Gampola athlete Nirmali Wickramasinghe and D.S. Senanayake College, Colombo high jumper Lesandu Arthavidu are the other athletes.

It is the first time that a team inclusive of school athletes are leaving for a foreign competition without a lady chaperon or at least one official from the Ministry of Education to look after them.

The athletes’ participation at the Commonwealth Youth Games was in jeopardy after the National Olympic Committee failed to obtain visas for the country’s teenagers to transit in Amsterdam. The sports Ministry and Sri Lanka Athletics intervened at the eleventh hour to obtain US visas for the team to transit in New York.

Last week Maxwell de Silva, the secretary of the National Olympic Committee said that there had been no mistake from the part of the NOC in the process of obtaining visas for the athletes.