Sports

Sports

A silverlining in bungling times
An eye in the sky
By S. R. Pathiravithana
I could have just imagined the way young king Dutugemunu felt, while crouching on his bed and musing on the plight of his country. I felt somewhat the same while pondering about a subject to write about and I thought of cricket and felt “yuk”, Athletics “yuk”, Football “yuk”. All those sports are in very unprofessional hands and were staring into the dungeons in the hell below.

During this festive season I needed to write on a sport which is on a very professional footing doing the right things right and could look up to its future with hope and assurance. On the horizon there were only two – Rugby and boxing. I selected the latter subject because that sport was laid in the dungeons in the hell below and it was resurrected by a band of professionals led by that inimitable Dian Gomes, who was a boxer himself at his alma-mater Royal College a few decades ago.

I asked him about sports. How it could be transformed into a marketable product like the upward trend in the present status of boxing in the island?
Self assurance is his forte and Dian began “As the head of boxing for the last two years I have inculcated private sector visiong in running the sport. As the CEO of a multimillion dollar corporate, my thinking is towards running sports in a very corporate manner. The key drivers are showing results… “What do you mean by results? He quipped. Short term results!…medium term results! or long term results? I looked at the 2008 Olympics, -- 2008 and 2012 are our long term results. Winning a gold medal at the Olympics is our long term result! Then how could we approach and achieve these dreams?

“We have about 15 guys who we are training and some who will be peaking by the year 2008, among them also we have ear-marked two potential medal winners – they are Kamal Sameera who is twenty years old and Manju Wanniarachchi who is twenty three years old. Then we looked at who was going to coach them. At present locally there is no one with the correct exposure to train them at a level that the game prevails at the international level. For the development of a sport you must inculcate technology, because every sport is very professional now. So we looked at the best.

Presently Cuba has the best boxing. So at the government to government level we managed to get a Cuban coach from the Cuban Boxing Association. As a matter of fact over 50% of the medals at the Olympics is won by Cuba. Now the Cuban coach has been here for the last two years and you can see the results. So we have put technology into the sport through the Cuban coach. That is our long term strategy. Two or three Lankan coaches are understudying the Cuban coach – one is captain Indrasena who is a senior coach and two younger guys. One is Wasantha Kumara who is a graduate from the university who has been sent to Hungary by the NOC for training. So we have more technology input there.

The third in our vision was to give our boxers international training and exposure. For the first time in the history of Sri Lanka boxing the pugilists are boxing at international meets every few months. For example they started at the “Kings Cup”. There we had limited success. There Wanniarachchi won a Silver medal, where he met the Olympic Gold medalist in the final. Then we followed this up with a gold and three silvers at the SAF games. This means four of our boxers were in the finals of their respective categories, also we won two bronze medals at the commonwealth championships in Scotland after fifty years. I want to emphasize that if Sri Lanka can expose boxers in the first four weights (Light fly, Fly, Feather and Bantam) as we do not have the height nor the weight to fight in the heavier categories.

The boxer turned CEO and CEO turned sports administrator explained that to achieve results at this regularity the administration of the sport also has to be disciplined. Dian said even he does not go on any tour unless he buys his own ticket and so are the other officials unlike in some other sports. Another noteworthy factor is that the ABA also believes in being ‘lean and mean’. Now for any contest abroad there will be only the coach and the manager travelling in the contingent other than those who will be in the ring later on—a cue to the other sports associations too.

Speaking further on funding Dian said “The government does not support funding for games like boxing in spite of it being one of the sports that had brought in a haul of medals in the pre-sixty era. Next to athletics it has been boxing that has won the most number of medals.

However the government supports a lot of sports financially, but they have very little chance of winning a medal for the country. Private companies like Brandex, Caltex Stretchline, MAS holdings and some banks have come to the rescue in a big way with funding. When they believe that we can deliver they are not afraid of funding”

Then Dian explained further that even in his selection panel he likes to have transparency and has included people who he thinks are above board. He said “One is DIG Jayakumar Thangavelu who is the head of the Police legal division. The other is Brig Jagath Jayasuriya of the Sri Lanka Army and the third is Edward de Silva the former financial director a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Finally there is Marzook who is a senior person in the field of boxing in the country.

Then another veteran Herbert Imbuldeniya who has refereed in about six Olympics acts as the technical advisor and he keep me posted about all the new developments in the game”.

Delving into the nursery of the game – the schools arenahe pointed out that in the past most of the leaders in various echelons had boxed for their respective schools and considered it as a character building process.

At the same time he said boxing is now considered as a rural sport and is not confined to the big colleges in the big cities. Now the talent comes from schools like Vidyartha Pirivena, Horana, and Seevali Maha Vidyalaya, Ratnapura. Now the corporates have taken this as a good vehicle to build athletes from underprivileged backgrounds harness their talents and turn them intoprospective medal bainners.

That is why people like Kishu Gomes, Ashroff Omar and Mahesh Amalean have invested in this sport. For instance medal winner Kamal Sameera is a farmer’s son, from Ratnapura and today he is a national asset. In short it should be a concerted effort where you have to put the country first. For example we had not sent a boxer to the Olympics since 1968 – for the last nine Olympics – after Karunaratne we have not been able to send a boxer to the Olympics.

During the last World Championships where we sent boxers for the first time Sameera gave two knock down counts to a Welshman. “A Sri Lankan giving two KO counts to a boxer from Great Britain gives a good indication of the talent we possess.” Finally he said ‘With all this we have to convert this game to run like a private sector organization, with a good CEO, a good set of directors who are result oriented and accountable.

For instance so far we have been able train the boxers, provide employment to them and also take part in all the major tournaments abroad with private funding. That is an achievement on its own. My fervent hope is that I could leave behind a legacy so that this standard that we are building up now will sustain itself in the post Dian Gomes era.”

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