Shafiya Yamick Asian Games Snub: Sports Minister’s “Muslim Leaders” Quote Is Fake

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Fathima Shafiya Yamick is the reigning South Asian champion in the women’s 100m and 200m, a triple gold medallist whose absence from Sri Lanka’s squad for the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games had already angered sports fans across the country. Into that frustration came a fabricated news card that turned a selection row into a religious one. It quoted Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Sunil Kumara Gamage as saying she had been removed from the Games because the Muslim community and its religious leaders had asked for it. Here are the posts that carried the claim.

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Fact-Check

Fathima Shafiya Yamick is a Sri Lankan sprinter who has excelled at the national and international levels. At the 4th South Asian Senior Athletics Championships in Ranchi, India (24 to 26 October 2025), she won three gold medals: the women’s 100m in a championship record of 11.53 seconds, the 200m in a championship record of 23.58 seconds, and the 4x100m relay. Hiru News and eLanka reported her treble, and the official results are published by World Athletics.

A remark of this kind from a Cabinet minister would have drawn wide coverage. We found no official statement, media report or recording in which the Minister said anything of the sort, and, as shown below, both the Minister and the outlet whose logo the card carries have publicly disowned it.

Dasatha Lanka News Never Published the Card, and the Minister and Shafiya Yamick Both Called It Fake

The card was built on the news-card template of Dasatha Lanka News, but our search of the outlet’s Facebook page and website found no such card, and the outlet itself posted a clarification stating that the card was fake and misused its official logo.

Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage also dismissed the card as false, captioning his response (translated from Sinhala): “This is how low the rival camps have sunk, frightened by what we have achieved in two years.” Shafiya Yamick also shared the Minister’s clarifications on her own Facebook account

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The Post Is Fake, but Shafiya Yamick Was Genuinely Left Out of the Asian Games Squad

The controversy now circulating on social media grew out of a real decision: Shafiya Yamick was not selected for the Asian Games.

The National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOC Sri Lanka) officially announced the squad and entry list for the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games. The list is available here.

Leading sprinters such as Shafiya Yamick and Amasha de Silva, the South Asian 100m silver medallist and a member of the gold-winning 4x100m relay team, were missing from the women’s athletics squad, which triggered a backlash on social media. Sri Lanka entered no athletes in the women’s 100m and 200m, the events Yamick competes in. Fans and commentators sharply criticised the sports authorities, the Sports Ministry and the selectors for leaving her out.

The Minister’s Office Said Politicians Play No Role in Selecting Athletes

Even in the comments under the Minister’s own post debunking the card, social media users asked why the athlete had not been picked for the Asian Games.

We put the question to the media secretary of Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage. He confirmed that Shafiya Yamick and several other athletes had indeed not been selected. He explained that athletes for events such as the Asian Games are chosen on the basis of qualifying trials and criteria set by Sri Lanka Athletics. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, the Cabinet Minister and politicians have no role or power in selecting or removing athletes, he said.

He added that the Minister only receives the list of athletes after Sri Lanka Athletics has made its selections. Because there were problems with the Asian Games selections, he said, the members of the selection committee stepped down after making them, and selections had been made according to personal preference. English media had reported the collective resignation of the Sri Lanka Athletics Selection Committee in July.

Speaking at a media briefing, the Minister said neither the Sports Ministry nor the Olympic Committee interferes in the selection of athletes. He acknowledged that problems within selection committees sometimes create difficulties and that several athletes had been overlooked for the Asian Games because of such problems. He said these issues would be discussed separately.

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The Minister also spoke about selection problems for the Asian Games and other tournaments during a recent television discussion. He explained that a preliminary list must be submitted before the final list for any international event. Once the deadline has passed, the system does not allow an athlete who was unfairly left off the preliminary list to be added to the final one. He said he signs the final list subject to those limits.

When the Ministry questioned the selection committee over the unfair treatment of several athletes, he said its members could not answer and tried to walk away before legal action could be taken. He added that the affected athletes were preparing to go to the Human Rights Commission and the courts. YouTube

The law gives the Minister a formal role at the end of the process, however. Under the Sports Law regulations, as amended in 2022, athletes for the Asian Games are selected by a National Sports Selection Committee whose members the Minister appoints, and the selection is subject to the Minister’s prior written approval. The Minister does not pick athletes, but he approves the final list, as he himself acknowledged on television (see below).

Sri Lanka Athletics Say Yamick’s 2026 Times Missed the Qualifying Standard

Sri Lanka Athletics (SLA) President Bimal Wijayasinghe responded to our query regarding Yamick’s exclusion. He said that after the new SLA administration took office in mid-March 2026, a panel drew up selection criteria for the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games, the World Junior Championships, and the national pool, based on standards from previous editions of those events. All selections, he said, were based on this year’s performance.

According to Wijayasinghe, Yamick performed well in 2025 but not in 2026. She finished second at the second national trial and won the National Championships in early September, but her times were not close to the qualifying standard, and entries had closed well before the National Championships. SLA’s Asian Games standard for the women’s 100m was 11.40 seconds. [Insert her 2026 trial and National Championships times, with wind readings, from SLA.] Her personal best of 11.51 seconds, set on 30 September 2025, and her title-winning 11.53 in Ranchi were also outside that mark. The standard is demanding: at the 2025 Asian Championships, 11.53 was enough to reach the final, which is why her supporters argue she was competitive at Asian level.

He explained that the Department of Sports Development, which administered SLA through a Competent Authority until the 12 March 2026 election, submitted a long list of entries by number in January. SLA later submitted a long list, followed in May by a shorter list of 19 athletes recommended by the selection committee. When the NOC raised Sri Lanka’s athletics quota to 24 in early July, the men’s 4x100m relay team was added after it broke the national record at the Asian Relays Championships in June.

Athletes who performed well after late May could not be added, he said. SLA tried to include two more athletes in the mixed 4x100m relay and two in individual events, but the organisers did not accept the entries. Wijayasinghe said the final list was ratified by the National Sports Selection Committee and that SLA, the committee, the Department of Sports Development and Sports Ministry officials were all involved in the process. SLA had no intention of treating its own athletes unfairly, he said, but had to work within the allocation.

None of the Top Finishers in the South Asian Women’s 100m and 200m Are Running Those Events at the 2026 Asian Games

According to the entry lists published by the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 organisers as of 23 September 2026, none of the Ranchi medallists in the women’s 100m or 200m is entered in those events at the Asian Games. India has no entrant in the women’s 100m, Olympics.com reports, and its two entrants in the women’s 200m are not the runners who took silver and bronze in Ranchi. The official Ranchi results are published by World Athletics. This matters because a South Asian title is not a qualification route to the Asian Games: national federations select against their own standards, and across the region those standards have excluded the sprinters who dominated in Ranchi.

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Conclusion

The post claiming that Sports Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage said Shafiya Yamick was removed from the Asian Games at the request of the Muslim community and its religious leaders is false. The card was a forgery on the Dasatha Lanka News template; the outlet disowned it, and the Minister and his media office confirmed it was fake. We found no record of the Minister making any such remark.

Yamick was, however, genuinely left out of the Asian Games squad, and Sri Lanka entered no athlete in her sprint events. The Minister’s office said the Minister and the Ministry do not select athletes, although under the Sports Law regulations the Minister appoints the National Sports Selection Committee and gives final written approval to Asian Games teams. The Minister acknowledged at a media briefing and on television that problems within the selection committee had led to several athletes being overlooked this year and alleged that selections had been made on personal preference; the committee resigned in July.

Sri Lanka Athletics President Bimal Wijayasinghe told us that selection was based on 2026 performances, that Yamick’s 2026 times fell short of the 11.40-second women’s 100m standard, that her National Championships win came after entries had closed, and that the 24 athletics places were filled within the quota set by the NOC. None of the Ranchi medallists in the women’s 100m and 200m is contesting those events at the 2026 Asian Games.