With the interest in Boxing increasing in Sri Lanka, this years’ Novices Tournament saw a turn-out of 19 clubs fielding 207 male boxers and 47 Female Boxers. The Army, Navy and Air Force each fielded 160 participants recording the highest turn out for this Tournament in the history of Boxing in Sri Lanka.
Linea Boxing Club stole the limelight of the finals winning stunning 3 golds in the men division while Navy, Air Force and Army Red Boxing Clubs won 2 gold each. Ghandara Boxing Club won one gold medeal in the same division.
Air Force fielding highest number of boxers, 17 women boxers won 4 Golds out of the 9 bouts keenly fought by the Female pugilists. The Amry and Linea Boxing Clubs won 2 goldsmedals each. MAS Southen boxing club fielded one female boxer and won the Gold medal in Bantam weigh category.
The Best Boxer Awards were won by Kasuan Batawala of Linea Boxing Club and Subodha Herath of Army in both the Male and Female categories whilst the Best Loser Female Award was won by Ruchini Dilhani of Navy and Best Loser Male Award was won by Pradeep Rathnayake representing Army BC.
This year’s competition contained a high standard of Boxing and a larger group of youngsters vying for their respective weight category titles. The winner and runner up of this tournament are qualified to compete at the National Level Tournament, such as Layton Cup, Clifford Cup and National Championships.
Year 2014 will definitely have an even higher turn-out of Boxers and the Novices Tournament will require to be held for 6 days in order to accommodate bouts. Sri Lanka seems to be inching towards the goal of reaching required standards in most weight categories to win medals at the International tournaments and the ABA has planned for various training and coaching programs to ensure reaching this goal. The future of this sport seems extremely promising for the island and requires careful planning and funding to realize the dream of Gold at Olympics.
