The Golden Girl from Ambagamuwa Central College, Yamani Dulanjali made the whole of Sri Lanka proud with the sensational win of a gold medal at the recently concluded 1st Asian Youth Athletics Championship at Qatar.
As the only female athlete in the team, Dulanjali’s effort was substantial to produce gold (01.01.27 sec) beating the best of Asians in her first international outing. But Dulanjali’s family background could hardly be considered a plus point for her achievements.
None of Dulanjali’s parents have permanent jobs her father does day to day labor for a living while she also has to take care of her disabled mother. Her only brother is also unemployed after studying up to Advance Level and to top that their half finished house isn’t exactly the best place to live in. With all these problems in mind Dulanjali has a lot more to think of than winning gold medals for her country.
Hailing from the rough trodden village full of difficulties – Udabulathgamuwa of the Central Province, Dulanjali who is now 16, it was never a path of roses to her medal unlike many popular schools’ athletes in Capital cities. Lack of proper ground facilities, nutrition and funds are a few of those problems which Dulanjali went through to beat the best in Asia earlier this week.
Nevertheless with all these draw backs Dulanjali was fortunate to have the famous Sugath Thilakaratne and Anura Bandara to coach. Bandara who now works as assistant director of education (Sports) at the Hatton Zonal education office continues to train athletes of Ambagamuwa Central where he met with the rare talent of Dulanjali.
“She is a talented athlete just as Sugath, and will be able to go on and win the world if given the correct support by the State”said Bandara speaking about Dulanjali.
Dulanjali was qualified to represent both 400m hurdle and 400m dash at the championship yet rules of Asian Championship prevented her from competing at 400m. She clocked 1 minute 01.27 seconds winning the 400m hurdles comfortably after going into the final as favourite with best timing in the heats.
Dulanjali has already qualified to represent Sri Lanka in the forthcoming IAAF World Youth Championship to be held from 15th to 19th July in Cali, Colombia.
The pictures attached to this article show how poverty stricken Dulanjali is to carry on running, living here under utmost difficult conditions in the village of Udabulathgamuwa. A private sponsor who has the heart to support Dulanjali will give some relief to her to keep running for the country; but taking her from the Asian Youth victory to win the world will be the responsibility of country’s sports ministry, who failed to safe guard a number of talented young athletes in the recent past – will not want to make the same mistake again with this youth winner.
