POLONNARUWA: When 25-year-old Chinthana Vithanage lifted himself to the top place in the 62 kg weight lifting category at the Commonwealth Games in Australia on March 17, his mother in a mud hut in a rural village in Polonnaruwa, a region known as one of Sri Lanka’s ancient Kingdoms, was worrying about making ends meet for the day’s household expenses.

Living in an area that has been on the fringes of the war plagued north east, Dharmaseeli had to make continuous trips down the lane of her rustic village to use a neighbour’s phone when insistent journalists called to find out about her son’s journey from poverty to glory in Melbourne.

In line for the one-million-rupee reward offered by President Mahinda Rajapakse for any athlete who wins a gold at the Commonwealth Games, the story of Chinthana Vithanage is one of rags to riches achieved overnight, incidentally on the same day that the Sri Lankan cricket team beat Australia on March 17, 1996, to win the World Cup in one-day cricket.

Chinthana, the son of a music teacher in the village school, had been brought up single handedly by his mother along with his three brothers after his father died 20 years ago.

Earning a living by supplying food to a nearby boutique, the mother had taken on the additional job of seamstress as well to help her son in his efforts to pursue a weight lifting career, “It was a hand to mouth existence for me as well as for my sons but it is relentless determination that has now put himself and the country on the map,” Dharmaseeli recalled in her interviews to the local media adding that her son frequently could not afford to buy a powder used for grip in weight lifting.

Sri Lanka won its last Gold Medal in 1994 when rifle shooters Pushpamali Ramanayake and Mali Wickremasinghe emerged first in their category. Four years ago, at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Chinthana was placed fourth in his category. After the country’s sports heroine, sprinter Susanthika Jayasinghe who also hailed from one of Sri Lanka’s backward villages, Chinthana Vithanage is the latest village sports gold mine.