Sri Lankan masters nationals will be held here.
How would you feel if USATF said you couldn’t enter Lyon worlds unless you competed this summer at Jacksonville nationals? That’s the scenario facing Sri Lankans, according to a
story in The Nation. “The annual open athletics championships of the Masters Athletics Sri Lanka will be held on 16 & 17 May at the
Mahinda Rajapaksa Stadium Diyagama,” the report begins. “This will also serve as trials for the World Masters Athletics championships. … Only those who reach the qualifying standards will be selected for the WMA championships.
” The story says WMA Secretary
Winston Thomas “clearly stated that entries sent through
Masters Athletics Sri Lanka (MASL) only will be accepted for any international competition in future. Therefore it is important that all athletes who desire to participate in future foreign competitions participate in the MASL open championships.” I’m not sure Winston had this in mind. Yes, you must be a USATF member to be on Team USA, but where is it said you have to compete in a country’s masters nationals as well? A sign of Sri Lankan priorities: Their
website’s photo galleries focus almost exclusively on the bigshots in suits, not athletes in singlets.
2 Responses
This lot are just following the practice of the Indian authorities, aren’t they?
On subject of Lyon entries, just done mine. Amused to see that a whole special section has been added to the Registration Confirmation and Receipt headed “Team USA Code of Conduct”. Who ever got the organisers to agree that was needed? I see it says the US athletes will be running a 4×200 relay. Good luck with that, then. No one else will, so you’ll probably win.
Uh oh. Looks like I created an international incident with the above post:
http://masterstrack.com/2015/04/35535/
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