Olympic Day celebrations, organized by the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOC) will be held in Nuwara Eliya on the 25th of June 2018 to celebrate the spirit of Olympics in the country.
The Olympic day run will commence outside the President’s house at 10am and end at the Cinecitta grounds. The total distance of the run will be 1.5Km. After the run there will be flag raising ceremony and the traditional lighting of the oil lamp followed by one-minute of silence in remembrance of fallen heroes.
‘Move, Learn and Discover are the three pillars of Olympic Day throughout the world and the NOC will base the local celebrations strongly on the said pillars. The pillar ‘Move’ will be represented in the Olympic day run while ‘Lean’ will take place as teachers from the Nuwara Eliya area will receive a day long training program focusing on football and volleyball which happen to be the most popular sports in the area. The ‘Discover’ aspect of the Olympic day celebration will see eSports being introduced to the participants prior to the Olympic day run. eSports has been added as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Asian Games which will be held in Indonesia in August with plans for making it a medal sport at the 2020 edition to be held in China.
Susanthika Jayasinghe, Sri Lanka’s first and only female Olympic medalist who won the silver medal in the Women’s 200m at the 2000 Sydney Olympics will headline alongside Jayanthi Kuru Utumpala and Johann Peries the Sri Lankan duo who scaled Mt. Everest as special guests at the annual Olympic Day run which will feature around 1000 school children.
Gold medalist at the 2017 Asian indoor athletic and martial arts championship and a prime medal hope at the upcoming Asian Games in the Women’s 800m, Gayanthika Abeyrathne will also take part in the 1.5km run taking time off her busy training schedule targeted at the Asian Games.
“The presence of all these celebrated athletes will be inspirational for all the young school kids taking part in our annual Olympic day run. It is not every day that you get the chance to meet people who have climbed Mt. Everest or won medals at the Olympics and I Hope this will motivate our youngsters to follow in their footsteps” said Mr. Suresh Subramanium, The president of the NOC.
The NOC has also organized an art competition featuring more than 100 school children from the area with arrangements made to donate books to over 50 participating schools from the Nuwara Eliya District. Asiri Health has come forward as the medical sponsor of the event with Asia foundation coming in as the sponsor for the books that will be distributed amongst the schools. Nestle Lanka PLC are also partnering up with the NOC to make the Olympic Day 2018 celebrations a truly meaningful and memorable event.
 will be held in Nuwara Eliya on the 25th of June 2018 to celebrate the spirit of Olympics in the country.){kind=link}