‘Our boxers will be competing in many international events in 2020’
The president of the Boxing Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) president Dian Gomes has announced plans to send pugilists for Olympic qualification events this year but their main goal is to succeed in the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
“We have strong future programmes in Sri Lanka and our boxers will be competing in many international events in 2020,” Gomes was quoted as telling the ASBC (Asian Boxing Confederation) management in Colombo.
“We finished the year of 2019 in the South Asian Games and after a long break we could get a gold medal in the boxing tournament in Nepal. Wanni Arachchige Rumesh Sandakelum defeated all of his rivals at the Light Heavyweight (81kg) in spite of his lack of international experiences, and received the right to box in the upcoming Qualifiers,” he said.
“We have strong targets for 2022 when the next edition of the Commonwealth Games will be taking place in Birmingham, England. We launched our Under-22 national programme to keep our young talents in the sport and we are expecting good results in the upcoming years,” said Sri Lanka’s leading boxing official who confirmed that foreign referees and judges have been invited to officiate at the National Boxing Championships to be held from January 21 to 25 at the Royal MAS Arena.
“Our first big event in 2020 will be the Sri Lankan National Elite Boxing Championships which is scheduled to take place in January. We have invited a few neutral referees and judges to arrange fair play for all of our female and male boxers in the National Championships,” he said.
“We can send three boxers to the upcoming Asian and Oceanian Olympic Qualification event to Wuhan, one girl and two boys to Wuhan on February. Hungary will have three international competitions in the forthcoming two months and we are planning to attend with a few talents at the Akos Toth Memorial Tournament,” he said.
“I am also planning to send boxers to the Montana Belts Tournament where we had already experience from the past and we will be returning to this French competition. Besides the Montana Belts Tournament, the Thailand Open International Boxing Tournament is also in our schedule on April,” he added.
“We are planning to send more boxers to the World Olympic Qualification Event to Paris, France which will be held in the middle of May after these preparation events and selection process. We know that to be qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is seriously hard for all of the National Federations but we will try to do our best in Paris. We are planning to take part also in each of the 2020 ASBC Asian Boxing Championships,” he said.