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Sri Lanka boxers steal the limelight
Namal Pathirage reporting from Melbourne, Australia
Manjula Wanniarachchi fighting in the under 54 kgs weight category won his Bantam weight bout against an Australian opponent while A.K.G. Kamal Sameera went down 8-22 to Pakistan’s Mehrullah in a keenly contested Lightweight (60kg) boxing bout. The Sri Lankan boxer won rounds of applause for his gutsy performance but failed to match the Pakistan boxer’s power and foot-work.

In another first round 75 kg bout Sri Lanka’s Fernando was beaten 18-14 by Alexander of Trinidad. Fernando started the fight with a lot of promise but later succumbed to the skilful boxing of Alexander. In badminton, Malaysia and Sri Lanka made the mixed team quarter-finals while regional sluggers scored a series of wins in the preliminary rounds of the boxing competition.

Sri Lanka’s Mayumi Raheem failed to qualify in the women’s 200m breaststroke semi-finals while India's Rehan Poncha and Arjun Muralidharan failed to qualify for the men's 200m backstroke semi-finals.

When the third day of the 18th Commonwealth Games drew to a close yesterday, Sri Lanka having won a gold medal through Chinthana Vidanage in the 62 kg. weightlifting event, was in ninth position of the 14 countries which won gold medals.

Sri Lanka has a large contingent at the Games and the sad part of it was that several officials were seen shopping in Melbourne and attending to their private affairs without being present at the Games.

Meanwhile Chinthana Vidanage, Sri Lanka’s man of the hour, took time off to talk to The Sunday Times. Chinthana goes down in history as the only Sri Lankan to win a gold medal after 55 years of the Games history. Earlier the Commonwealth Games was known as the Empire Games. Chinthana is an old boy of Polonnaruwa Royal College and is unemployed.

There are 21 officials in the Sri Lanka contingent but none of them were seen at the Games venue yesterday. Sports Ministry Secretary S. Wirithamulla and several high officials were reported to be in Melbourne but none of them were seen associating themselves with the Sri Lankan athletes.

These was also the news that former Sports Minister S.B., Dissanayake had arrived in Melbourne to witness the Games as well as visit one of his sons who is studying in Australia, Meanwhile Asia has eight nations in Melbourne and the drive is on to beat the 125 medals they brought home in 2002.

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