Despite producing an impressive performance to win the men’s 400 metres hurdles at the selection trial, promising hurdler Hasith Nirmal’s chances of competing at the Asian Athletics Championships are dim as his name had not been submitted in the probable athletes list The Island learns.
“As Nirmal had not been included in the initial list he could not participate in the forthcoming event,” a close to AASL said.
A specialist in the 110 metres hurdles, the 22-year-old ran the 400 metres hurdles as well at the selection trial which was held early this month. Nirmal clocked an impressive 51.80 seconds to win.
Incidentally it is the second such occasion in less than two years that an athlete coached by leading coach Prabath Fernando had faced such a predicament.
When contacted Fernando said that he was disappointed the way his athletes had been treated.
“I am thoroughly disappointed. I feel that there is someone purposely doing this to discourage my athletes. This is very bad for the sport. When an athlete reach standards that he is required to achieve, you should not disappoint him. That will affect his morale,” said Fernando in reply to The Island query.
“The time of 51.80 seconds merit selection. We don’t have good tracks here. Both the synthetic tracks we have are in very bad state. You can’t reach qualifying standards on such tracks. I can bet that my athlete can run at least a second faster than what he clocked at the selection trial on a good track.”
Incidentally, Udaya Viraj Weerasinghe, another athlete trained by Prabath Fernando faced similar fate when he was not picked for the last Commonwealth Games. Despite producing the best time in the 400 metres at the trials he was not able to compete at the major international event as his name had not been submitted in the long list.
“No one is responsible for the bad tracks we have. No one is responsible when an athlete who has reached standards is not selected for the team. Our hard work is in vain,” an irate Fernando said.
Sugath Thilakaratne, the newly elected president of the Athletics Association of Sri Lanka said that there was no way to include the athlete as he had switched to a new discipline only after the probable list had been sent.
“Nirmal has started the 400 metres only lately. We can’t enter the name of an athlete for an Asian Championship like we do at local competitions,” said Thilakaratne.
