“The Dream We Believed In” A Look Back from Sriyani Kulawansha OLY, President SLO

We have World Olympian Association formed only with Olympic participants.  And there are 148 national Olympian associations have registered with WOA, And now we are part of it.

In 2010 me (Sriyani Kulawansha OLY), Julian Bolling OLY, Conrad Francis OLY have participated in Asian Olympic congress and I have attained knowledge about WOA. From that day I was thinking of having national Olympians association here in Sri Lanka. But first few attempts to make this a reality failed, due to busy lifestyle we had back then. And In 2015 with Susanthika Jayasinghe OLY, Damayanthi Darsha OLY, Sugath Thilakarathne OLY, Conrad Francis OLY, Julian Bolling OLY we tried it again and failed.

But in 2016 April me, Susanthika Jayasinghe OLY, Damayanthi Darsha OLY, Sugath Thilakarathne OLY all four of us joined together and had a discussion to make this a reality. And we seek advice from WOA  Asian  congress, about how to establish this entity.

They have instructed us to form a team with 10-12 Olympians and appoint an executive committee to complete the needed initialization work. So in 26 September 2016, with the support of former president of Sri Lanka Athletics Associations Sugath Tilakarathne OLY, we gathered few Olympic athletes and formed SLO. And we have appointed a shadow executive committee. The first ever task for that committee is to form a constitution to SLO.

We made sure that the constitution we formed is very similar to the WOA constitution. We designed a LOGO for our Organization; And We came up with the Slogan “ONCE AN OLYMPIAN ALWAYS AN OLYMPIAN”. Those tasks were done after series of extreme modifications and finalized by the committee, we have revised the LOGO more than 10 times to finalize. Same goes for the Slogan, We studied other national Olympian association slogans and finalized three slogans, and finally we choose the slogan “ONCE AN OLYMPIAN ALWAYS AN OLYMPIAN”.

And further more when we are forming the constitution Mr. Chanaka Jayamaha attorney at Law voluntarily supported with legal background, And we gone through huge number of revisions before finalizing our constitution and finished few days before the AGM.

And main Purpose of SLO and WOA is the welfare of Olympians, as All the Members here in the SLO are Olympic participants the benefits will not fall in the wrong hands. Second in line is to promote and develop the ideals of Olympism throughout Sri Lanka ,Training  athletes, find talent in rural areas are other purposes. Currently we have a huge issue regarding doping in every corner of the world, we will be continuously advising the new generations of Sri Lanka Olympians about how to achieve the best without harming the Sri Lankan Proudness.

Furthermore we are gathering information about Olympians in Sri Lanka, when we contacted various entities like National Olympic Committee, Sports Ministry it is very hard to even get a name list, Still we can’t say exactly how many Olympians we have here in Sri Lanka. But according to the data we gathered there are 96 Olympians since 1948. From them only 67 Olympians are alive and only 46 Olympians live in Sri Lanka. And community around most of Olympians does not know these people as Olympians, so we are determined to improve the awareness about Sri Lankan Olympians and appraise them. And Most of the time when there is any regional sports event, there is no invitation or recognition about Olympians in that area, So I think from what we do using SLO will appraise the Olympians as the way they should while we introduce them to Sri Lanka. We establish a platform where Olympians can share their experience and motivate the youth to do sports beyond the limits; And Olympians can feel they have done their duty to this country by sharing their hard earned experience.

I’m sad we have lost some Olympians and we don’t know that, we did not even get chance to pray our last respects, in the future SLO will be there to share the grieving’s with the families and honor them as a Olympian, furthermore we will be there to help fellow Olympians in every difficulty they face in their life as a community.

In 15th July 2017 we gathered at our first ever Annual General Meeting with these purposes in our minds. 40 out of the 46 live Olympians in Sri Lanka were present that day. And I personally invited the fellow Olympians to share any thoughts , and the Speech done by Wimalasena Perera OLY made me think while I was achieving my dream I have gained blessings, he is 76 years old and he was very happy about SLO, and what he said was he can live long because he got his old life back. And we gained the trust to give back the country and to execute our mission. It gave me the happiness, that the thing we did by devoting our self for nearly two years has exceptional results.

Myself and our Committee personally feel accomplished by completing the “Ran Sammana” Award ceremony at President House, where our 42 Olympians are honored presenting a gold coin by the His Excellency the President Maithripala Sirisena for the fame they gave for the country. Special thanks go to the honorable sport minister Dayasiri Jayasekara for funding the award ceremony and Sanath Weerasooriya for allocating the President House as the venue for the event. And we have the wishes from president and grant of five million rupees to continue our humble work.

By doing all this we try to gather all our Olympians together, appraise them, help them, share their experience with the world and make more Olympic medalist from Sri Lanka in the near future from their support is my next Dream.

Thank you.

Sriyani Kulawansha OLY,

President SLO.