by Reemus Fernando

Sri Lanka’s national cross country team were in for a rude shock in Nagaland on Saturday when the Indian organizers of the South Asian Cross Country Championship presented the participants a hard-surface loop to compete the grueling endurance event which is usually run on courses over natural terrain of grass, dirt and mud.

As any cross country team would expect, the country’s team of 12 athletes, who endured a two-day long journey to reach Nagaland, were looking forward to compete on a usual cross country course. But they were in for a shock when the team visited the actual course where they were made to ponder whether they had accidentally come to compete in a road race.’

The youtube streaming of the event showed the runners commencing the different categories of the race from a synthetic track and then continuing the race on what looked like a concrete road.

Veterans of the event who witnessed the race on youtube said that it was embarrassing to see a cross country race being conducted on a road.

Nevertheless Sri Lanka’s athletes joined the rest of their South Asian counterparts to compete for the four titles, namely the Under 20 boys’, Under 20 girls’, Open men’s and open women’s championships. The Sri Lanka teams went on to win the runner up positions in the team championships of all four categories.

When contacted a Sri Lanka team source currently in India said “the technical meeting was held before the teams visited the course. So we did not have any other option but to participate. We were shocked to see that the organizers had made arrangements to conduct the race on a road with the start and finish arranged on a synthetic track.”

The course of the race was not the only technical mistake the organisers had made. “At the technical meeting it was said that both the South Asian Cross Country Championship and the Indian National Cross Country event would be held simultaneously and the two categories would be identified by the colour of the bib. But at the actual event all Indian participants were wearing the same colour. We protested against it at the end of the race,” said a team source.

A veteran official said that Sri Lanka team should have withdrawn from the competition after seeing the course of the race. “It is not a cross country race if the race is not started from an open area and is not conducted on a natural terrain. They invited a team for a cross country race.”