The hurriedly organized 27th National Youth Sports Festival came to an end with a pompous closing ceremony which lasted two and a half hours in order to pamper certain individuals, whereas after three hard days of athletics (hampered by bad weather), the exhausted athletes were looking to pack up and leave, as they had already faced several ordeals right from the District stages.
It was evident the main reason behind organizing the 27th edition of the festival in such a hurried manner and holding it within a gap of just 4 months after the 26th edition, was to put on a pampered show in front of the new Minister of Youth Affairs Niroshan Perera and Minister of Telecommunication and Digital infrastructure, Harin Fernando, who participated as Chief Guests, as top organizers had paid little attention to the organizing and conducting of District level competitions prior to the festival.
They (organizers) took away the youth officials who were assigned to perform various task of the competition and allocated them to organize the closing ceremony, thereby creating chaos in conducting the last part of the competition in which they seemed to have lost interest.
Athletes had to undergo a lot of hardship for three days as the competition was hampered by rain throughout the three days, and the only thing on their minds was going off after the competition came to a close at 4.00 p.m. on Sunday. But organizers took 2 and half hours to distribute the awards, while the ministers too took the opportunity to give political speeches which was of no interest to the athletes, as several of them went away while some fell unconscious due to extreme tiredness and had to be carried out of the field.
Even before the start of the championship Ceylon Today reliably learned that some of the Districts, such as Matale, had not held their District competitions to select their team for the Youth Sports Festival. Officials had selected their favourites to represent the District which had prevented talented athletes from participating at the event.
Coming into the championship, it was evident lack of participation at the festival was due to little or no care for athletes by the officials. Some Districts, such as Kandy, which used to field a strong team for the championship, wasn’t seen doing the same this time, and a number of events were worked off as direct finals due to lack of participation. For example, the over 20 men’s 4x400m relay team had only 4 teams participating even though there are 26 Youth Districts, and at least one team from each District would see 26 teams which would have increased the participation.
Organizers took measures to hold both the 26th and 27th editions of the Youth Sports Festival this year as the previous ministry under the previous government did not hold the championship in 2014. Even though the organizers efforts to conduct both championships were appreciable, the real motives and way of organizing the two festivals has come under criticism due to the way it was done.
