Sports Ministry grants LKR 35 mn to improve gymnastics

Amal Edirisooriya, Director-General of the Sports Development Department and Kapila Jeevantha, Secretary, SLGA exchanged documents

By Susil Premalal

Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa believes that Sri Lanka has the potential to win medals in gymnastics at future international tournaments. The Minister stressed that Milka de Silva’s participation at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was a huge achievement and Sri Lanka could soon become a major force in the sport if properly managed.
In fact, the National Sports Council (NSC) has already identified gymnastics as a medal-winning sport and under the High-Performance Sports Development Programme, the Sri Lanka Gymnastics Association (SLGA) received a sum of LKR 35,998,000 from the Sports Ministry recently. 

Director-General of the Sports Development Department, Amal Edirisooriya and Secretary SLGA Kapila Jeevantha signed the agreement in the presence of the Minister.       

The Minister hoped that Sri Lanka will be able to make an impact at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, France, 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England and 2022 Asian Games in China.

The Sports Ministry has already made arrangements to build a state-of-the-art international training centre at Torrington at a cost of LKR 70 million as infrastructure development. In addition, the National Sports Complex in Matara has been handed over to the SLGA for their administrative duties.