Amasha de Silva reached her personal best when she clocked 11.55 seconds to win the women’s 100 metres at the National Athletics Championships. (Pix by Kamal Wanniarachchi)

by Reemus Fernando

Sprint coach Sanjeewa Weerakkody who trained Amasha de Silva to clock 11.55 seconds in the women’s 100 metrres at the last week’s National Athletics Championship believes that a culture of sharing knowledge among local coaches should be promoted to bring the best out of track and field athletes.

While stressing on the importance of insisting on local knowledge, Weerakkody reckoned that obtaining foreign expertise to fine tune coaching knowledge through workshops here would be more beneficial than sending athletes and coaches for foreign training.

In an interview with The Island on the sidelines of the 98th National Athletics Championship, Weerakkody said that the 98th National Athletics Championship has proven that it was finer points of coaching applied with the local knowledge that were behind the success of athletes.

“The knowledge that I obtained at the coaching workshop conducted by the Sri Lanka Schools Athletics Association in January 2020 went a long way in getting my athletes to where they are now,” said Weerakkody who has been in the field of coaching since 2002.

Couple of sprinters coached by Weerakkody reached their personal best performances during the National Championships. Amasha clocked 11.55 seconds to reach her personal best in women’s 100 metres. Chamod Yodasinghe who clocked 10.58 seconds to be placed fourth in the men’s 100 metres also reached his personal best, while emerging multidiscipline athlete Lakshini Dissanayake was the winner of the heptathlon,.

Weerakkody was among dozens of local coaches who attended the coaching workshop conducted by former World Athletics coaching expert Gunter Lange in Galle in 2020 and he is also one of the few local coaches who had witnessed drop of performances of their athletes following foreign training.

“When Amasha returned from Australia after a training stint, there was a drop in her performance. She had clocked a personal best of 11.71 seconds in Gifu Japan in 2018 but there was a drop of form during the following year. It took time to bring her back to reach her personal best again. The knowledge I gathered at the workshop conducted by the Sri Lanka Schools Athletics Association and the online lectures I attended thereafter helped me guide her. I would recon such workshops rather than sending athletes for foreign training,” said Weerakkody.

“One can gain knowledge by going overseas for coaching courses. But if experts can be brought here for coaches to attend training or to be guided by them that will be more economical and productive,” opined the coach.

“I would also recommend emerging coaches to go for research based education and invite coaches to share knowledge to improve standards. We should promote a culture where coaches share their knowledge rather than keeping it to themselves,” said Weerakkody who is optimistic of further improving the standards of his trainees.

Weerakkody has identified areas including nutrition that has to be looked into for Amasha to achieve high performance.

Speaking on Amasha he had this to say: “She was not a top national athlete during her junior years. Now only she is ready for high performance training. She has the potential to be among the top Asian athletes of her discipline and even to brush shoulders against world’s top athletes one day.”