Dian Gomes elected to ABC executive committee

Dian Gomes, the president of the Boxing Association of Sri Lanka was elected as an executive committee member of the Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC) last week.

The boxing regional body in a statement announced that Sri Lankan boxing chief Gomes was elected as a member following the seventh round of the Executive Committee voting at the ASBC General Assembly in Bangkok.

Apart from the Sri Lanka boxing president, the only South Asian official to be elected was Jay Kowli from India in the ten-member committee. A total of 36 delegations had voting rights in the ASBC General Assembly while two countries attended the event as observers, ASBC said.

Gomes who is the man behind the success of local boxing in the past few years plans to do a lot of work with this Asian post. Local boxers won several medals at international level in recent times.

At the last Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Sri Lankan boxers won three bronze medals. Gomes’ vision is to produce an Olympic boxer after Anuruddha Ratnayake who participated at the 2004 Olympics. Apart from Colombo and Kandy Gomes has already made arrangements to promote other areas.

The former Royal College boxer is very keen to promote this sport at school level.

However, the national boxers are getting ready for the next South Asian Games in Nepal where Gomes expects them to get medals. He also has an idea to get support from the Asian Confederation to develop the sport in Sri Lanka.

Upon conclusion of the voting, Wu Di of China and Jae Joon Yoo of South Korea were appointed as Vice-Presidents of the sporting body receiving 27 and 14 votes respectively. Yousuf Ali Al-Kazem of Qatar and Pichai Chunhavajira of Thailand gained automatic qualification as Vice Presidents.

The members who were elected to the committee are as follows: Shelly Selowati H. Soejono – Indonesia, Syed Abdul Kadir – Singapore, Jaber Muhsen – Kuwait, Sisouphanh Sengsavanh – Laos, Ali Takleef Shaheed – Iraq, Edgar Picson – Philippines, Jay Kowli – India, Dian Gomes - Sri Lanka, Zhusupbek Korgonbai Uulu – Kyrgyzstan, Saken Polatov – Uzbekistan.