“This was back in the days of the VCR and I remember I couldn’t wait to watch each tape,” Matthew said.
Manoj smiled: “He still remembers those races. To remember what you did when you were just 4 years old, that means you must have really felt something back then.”
“That’s when I first dreamed of being an Olympian,” Matthew said.
They were recounting these memories the other day as they sat next to the Prairies Pool just outside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Certainly some things have changed since those Sydney Games:
VCRs are a thing of the past. At 20 and a sculpted 165 pounds, Matthew is too big for his dad’s lap. And, most notably, the Olympics are no longer some far off dream reachable only through a TV screen.
In fact, today Matthew and his dad are in Brazil, readying for the 2016 Games of Rio de Janeiro.
Matthew is now an Olympian.
He’s competing for Sri Lanka, the island nation of some 20.3 million off the coast of India, where he’s already become a swimming legend. At the same time he’s also representing plenty of people in the Beavercreek and Dayton area who remember him as a budding national talent here.
The family lived here for many years. Manoj, who now coaches Matthew and younger sons Kyle and Dillon, was once a coach with the Dayton Raiders, the swim club with whom Matthew first made his name.
Oldest son Andrew, now 25, starred at Beavercreek High School, represented the Beavers at the state meet, and after graduation went on to Clemson University as a swimmer. Matthew graduated from Ferguson Middle School.
Manoj, with wife Laura, then moved the family back to his homeland in 2010 and since then — in the capital city of Colombo — he has built a multi-lane 25-meter swimming pool and now has a vibrant learn-to-swim program involving some 800 people and the more celebrated Killer Whale Aquatics competitive swim team.
It’s from the latter that Matthew launched what has already become a storybook career. His passport is stamped full of places where he has competed — including China, India, Spain, Turkey, Dubai, Qatar, Russia, England and the United States.
Earlier this year he shattered all Sri Lankan records at the South Asian Games in Guwahati, India, winning seven gold medals, two silver and a bronze in the 11 events he swam. Earlier this month — in a competition in Hong Kong — he became the first Sri Lankan swimmer to qualify for the Olympic Games under an Olympic standard.
He’ll march in Friday night’s opening ceremonies in Rio and on August 9 he’ll compete in the 100-meter freestyle prelims.
In preparation, he and his dad spent a week in the Dayton area to adjust to the 8 ½-hour time difference between Sri Lanka and Rio, do some touch-up work under the watchful eye of Dayton Raiders coach Kevin Weldon and, in the process, buoy themselves on the good vibes they get back here.
That was evident at the Prairies Pool and at the Dayton Raiders Aquatics Center on Grange Hall Road the other afternoon where more than one fellow parent came up to congratulate Manoj.
Matthew not only has a dual citizenship — U.S. and Sri Lanka — but he has a dual “legacy,” as his dad put it.
Just as he is the current national record holder in nine different events in Sri Lanka, he still holds 23 age-group records with the Dayton Raiders.
“I was born in this country and lived here until I was 14, I love the U.S.,” Matthew said with a growing smile. “And it’s been great seeing some of my old friends again, though they’re all a few inches taller now.”
Manoj has savored the return, as well:
“This is really an unbelievable feeling. I didn’t realize how much I missed it here until I came back. It’s really nostalgic.”
For Matthew it could be much more than that.
Although, as Weldon put it, “he sort of dropped off the (college) radar when he moved” to Sri Lanka, his recent splash has schools looking at him in earnest now.
He’s being recruited by several swim programs, especially Ohio State.
‘A real Sri Lankan’
Manoj grew up in Sri Lanka and then went to England to study before attending Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. It was there he met Laura, who is from New York.
They married and today have the four sons.
Although Manoj had often thought of returning to Sri Lanka, the nation once known as Ceylon, he didn’t want his family to have to endure the civil war that raged there for almost 30 years and claimed 60,000 to 100,000 lives.
As a teenager, he had gotten a close look at the turmoil.
“Back in 1983 — I was about 14 then — I remember there were riots in response to 13 soldiers who were killed by terrorists,” he said. “They burned out the Tamil population and my father’s best friend was Tamil.
“He actually had our car and was nearly killed when people burned it up. He escaped and came to our house, then went to my aunt’s because it was so dangerous. He eventually moved to Canada and just passed away a few years ago. He and my father had been friends for over 50 years.”
Initially raising his young family in Hazelton, Pa., Manoj said he took Andrew, the oldest boy, to a local YMCA pool when he was 9 because he was “terrified” of the water.
As Andrew learned to swim, 4-year-old Matthew fearlessly followed him into the water.
“I remember Michele Yakubowski, his first coach in Hazelton, telling me one day that he was the most coordinated young person she had,” Manoj said.
Once the family had relocated to the Dayton area — where Manoj’s sister lived and where he thought the swimming opportunities were more abundant — Andrew blossomed, and before his sophomore year at Beavercreek High, he went to Sri Lanka with his dad and qualified for the South Asian Games.
While newspapers like the Sri Lanka Daily News celebrated his arrival — “The Golden Son,” read one headline, “The Child Prodigy,” read another — some local coaches and parents were angered because they thought their kids were being over-shadowed.
The pettiness escalated and when some officials bowed to the pressure and denied Andrew’s efforts to participate, then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped in and invited Andrew to join the national team.
He responded by winning gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke, broke South Asian Games records in each event and garnered a new headline in the Daily News: “Abeysinghe Shuts Mouths of Critics.”
Although this time around Matthew still faced a few pockets of resistance, he was mostly embraced, not only because the family now lives there and everyone knows how hard he works — 14-15 sessions a week, each lasting two or three hours — but because he’s bringing glory to the nation like no other swimmer before.
He put on a one-man show at the South Asian Games, a feat made all the sweeter because it came at the expense of next-door rival India, which always dominates Sri Lanka in the pool.
Right from the start Matthew stamped his identity on the Games. On the first day of competition — in the span of about 40 minutes — he won the 200-meter freestyle, the 100-meter butterfly and anchored the 4x400 relay.
On the final day he won two events and then, although tired, was asked to anchor the 4x100 relay.
His team was dead last when it became his turn, but undaunted he caught the race-leading Indian anchor in the first 50 meters.
“I remember thinking at that point how many times in the past India had beaten us in the relays and that we Sri Lankans hadn’t had a victory in swimming against them in 25 long years,” he told the Sunday Observer.
That’s when he gritted through the pain and fatigue and put away his Indian rival in the final 25 meters.
“My goal was to win as many gold medals as possible for Sri Lanka,” he said. “And I think people appreciated that afterwards. They saw me as a real Sri Lankan now who loves his country.”
Look out Tokyo
Sri Lanka has only had two people — in any sport — win an Olympic medal. Duncan White won silver in the 400 hurdles at the 1948 London Games and Susanthika Jayasinghe took silver in the 200 meters in Sydney.
Some think Matthew could — one day — win the nation its first Olympic swimming medal.
It likely won’t happen in these Games, but — surrounded by more of the top-flight training partners he could find on a college team — he could be a more viable contender in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Weldon and Manoj agree there’s still a lot of room for growth.
“He probably won’t do anything this time around, he’s not ready yet,” Manoj said. “His times just aren’t there.”
Australia’s Cameron McEvoy has the top time in the event this year (47.04 seconds) and the U.S.’s Nathan Adrian is next (47.72). Matthew’s best time is the 50.53 he swam earlier this month in Hong Kong.
Manoj believes that by 2020 his son will have a chance to advance to the final and maybe better.
“America has so many people who can make the finals and win medals and do great things for it,” Matthew said. “Sri Lanka doesn’t and I want to change that. My goal is to become the first Sri Lankan to win a medal at the Olympics. I want to do something special.”
He already has, Wheldon said:
“I think it’s pretty cool when you have this dream of being an Olympian and then you actually make it happen.”
Especially when that dream began when you were 4 years old.
About the Author