Chairman, National Sports Council (NSC) Mahela Jayawardene said that a national sports strategy will be launched to focus on athletes and to uplift their standard to the highest level in the future.

The former Sri Lanka Cricket Captain made these comments during a media briefing held at the Sports Ministry Auditorium in Colombo on Wednesday.

‘We are planning to introduce a national sport strategy mainly to focus on athletes and to uplift their standard for the highest level”

“Our target is to create a unified approach to high-performance sports in Sri Lanka that is of value based,” he emphasised.

“We want to see our athletes producing a sustainable and improved performance to inspire the nation through medals at Olympics, Paralympics and World Championships in targeted sports like athletics, para athletics, boxing, weightlifting and swimming.”

“Our goal is to felicitate medal winning athletes at international level and Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa has already given his blessings to execute our plans for the benefit of these athletes,” he explained.

“We have to update the infrastructure development projects, national high-performance strategy and maintain a sports data centre which is more important to obtain all details of the athletes for their developments.”

“We have to focus on a high-impact centre development model, sports budget transformation, national sports calendar which is under three key pillars,” he stated.

“There are 40-plus ongoing infrastructure projects which includes national sports complexes, district sport complexes, school swimming pools, public grounds and volleyball courts,” he noted.

“The outstation athletes do not need to come to Colombo and our plan is to provide their facilities in their own areas,” Jayawardene revealed.

“The Diyagama Sports Centre will be developed and improved as the national centre and provincial hub and another provincial training centre for each province will be launched,” he concluded.