Rs. 50 million boost as NSC, MoS identify boxing as a medal winning sport

BASL President Dian Gomes and Director General of the Department of Sports Development Amal Edirisuriya exchanging documents after signing a Memorandum of Understanding   

By Susil Premalal

The National Sports Council (NSC) has identified boxing as one of the sports Sri Lanka could win medals at international level.  

Therefore boxing has come under the purview of the High Performance Sports Development Programme initiated jointly by the NSC and the Ministry of Sports (MoS).  

NSC has proposed that boxing is a sport which should receive state support in future because it has the potential to win medals in the international arena.  

On a recommendation of the NSC to encourage and develop boxers for the 2022 Asian Games, 2022 Commonwealth Games and 2024 Olympic Games, Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa agreed to allocate a sum of Rs. 50,124,540 and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Boxing Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) President Dian Gomes on Friday.  

Boxing has a chequered history of winning medals at the Commonwealth Games (one gold, two silver and one bronze) and Asian Games (one silver and four bronze medals) in addition to heap of medals at the South Asian Games.  

A.W. ‘Barney’ Henricus was the first Sri Lankan from any sport to win a gold medal at the 1938 Sydney Commonwealth Games fighting in the feather weight followed by silver medals by Albert Perera and K. Edwin and bronze medal by Alex Obeyesekere at the 1950 Auckland Commonwealth Games.  

At the 1954 Asian Games in Manila, H.P. Jayasuriya won a silver medal while C.P. Jayasuriya clinched a bronze medal while at the 1962 Jakarta Asian Games S.P. Jayasuriya won a bronze medal.    Sri Lanka’s pugilists H.S. Caldera and R.D.W.N. Perera won bronze medals at the 1978 Bangkok Asian Games.  

Meanwhile, boxers have represented Sri Lanka at six Olympic Games since 1948 and 40 years later at the 2008 Beijing Olympics when Anuruddha Ratnayake qualified to take part.