WALIWARSHA Nimali

General
EARLY DAYS
She says there were limited coaching and facilities for athletics while she was growing up. "We had no permanent physical education teacher at school. No one guided us to do our sports, no one gave us support to select the events and everything was done by us. At age 14, I placed first in both the 800m and 1500m events at the annual sports meet. But no one thought I would reach this level today. I did not have a great idea of continuing with sports at the beginning. Our family was not financially stable and had doubts whether I could continue doing sports and academics at the same time. My parents are farmers and I have two elder brothers and a younger sister, and our family income was very low at that time. My father suddenly passed away when I was very young and this directly affected my family, with the entire burden falling on my beloved mother. My mother always wanted me to continue with sports and her blessings gave me a lot of encouragement." (dailynews.lk, 19 Jul 2021)