NEW DELHI: Prashanth Sellathurai, ‘Prince of the Pommel Horse’ at the Commonwealth Games after a flawless performance that earned him a score of 15.500, one of the highest awarded by judges across events in gymnastics, is an athlete with a difference. And not because he stands 150cm in his socks and tips the scales at 45kg while competing in a sport that demands strength, speed and skill.
An Australian with Tamil roots, his parents migrated Down Under in 1983 from Sri Lanka and the 24-year-old radiography student currently resides in Sydney, New South Wales, with his parents and two younger sisters. Indeed, it has been a long journey… with struggle and success, the preceding chapter of which was scripted on Tuesday when he combined with Joshua Jefferis, Samuel Offord, Luke Wiwatowski and Thomas Pichler to win for Australia its first gymnastics team gold in CWG history.
If Sellathurai was billed as Australia’s strongest candidate in gymnastics at the CWG, it was not without reason. As bronze medallist at last year’s World Championships, he had earned that right.
On Thursday, at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, mounting apparatus considered one of the most difficult to control in men’s competition, Sellathurai had gold written all over him the moment he dismounted. England’s junior European champion Max Whitlock (15.125), who won silver, and Singapore’s Jonathan Chan (14.200), who secured bronze, would have realised as much.
Meanwhile, for Sellathurai, it’s a fistful of gold… and glory.