The macro-task

History has shown us that those sports personas who have done our nation proud over the years have mostly hailed from rural backgrounds. We have also seen that in many instances they have managed to carry the Sri Lankan Flag despite of and not because of the facilities they had or the assistance they were offered by the government.

Therefore, it became imperative to make sure that rural sport infrastructure was brought to the level of international standards to ensure that successive generations of young athletes had both the best encouragement and the optimal chance to flourish in their respective disciplines. Additionally, it was also perceived that in the world of competitive sports, the high standards necessitated athletes to extend their bodies to the limit – and sometimes beyond – resulting in frequent injuries due to lack of scientific approaches to sport. Therefore, the acquisition, development and usage of a scientific approach to sport is critical in ensuring that optimal performance with minimal physical and mental damage to athletes thereby extending their productive competitive eras. However, infrastructure development and medical facility improvement are not completely sufficient to create the type of disciplined, healthy, productive and energized generation that the state envisaged. Rather, every effort had to be made to optimize the economic potency of sport based on and driven by a strong sport culture which have both fallen off over the last two decades.