Sumith Liyanage
Olympic participation is a milestone and dream of all sportsmen. It is the event of a lifetime, one to be recalled with much pride, fondness of lingering memories and camaraderie, over and over again in one’s later years to savour with much relish, nostalgia and emotion.
It is more so to add another milestone to life as the ‘Oldest Living Olympian in Sri Lanka’ like Sumith Liyanage, retired DIG, who has done Sri Lanka proud over the years as a top class sportsman as well as an exemplary Law Enforcement Officer in the Police.
He celebrated his 88th birthday on June 24, 2024 and over these long years many unforgettable events and memories have embedded in his memory.
Boxing for Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, at the Rome Olympics of the XVII Olympiad in 1960, he graced the ring like Floyd Patterson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, nicknamed the ‘Black Panther’. Incidentally Liyanage too was referred to by this nickname due to his many similarities in physical features and panther like movements in the ring.
Missing the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, though in the forefront for selection, he did his utmost in effort to be chosen for the following Rome Olympics, along with Dharmasiri Weerakoon, also a fellow DIG of exemplary service as a Law Enforcement Officer of the Police, to the sport of boxing and to his country.
The Olympic boxing draw put Liyanage against Jerzy Adamski of Poland, in the Feather weight category. Adamski was the reigning two-time European Champion. Undeterred by such credentials, a determined and confident Liyanage took him on and gave a very hard fight, flooring the European No.1 with his favourite and deadly left jab followed by the right cross in the very first round, which knocked Adamski down to the canvas for a count of ‘eight’.
But Adamski, drawing heavily on his long experience in the ring, managed to fight on in the next two rounds to scrape through to a narrow victory on points. While this prevented Liyanage’s progress at the Feather weight class, Adamski went on to be the Olympic silver medallist in this weight class.
Liyanage’s greatest memories of this Olympics is his meeting and friendly association with one of the most famous sportsman in the world, Cassius Marcellus Clay. He was perhaps the friendliest, likeable and popular sportsman at the event, who was boxing for the USA in the Light Heavy weight class and who was to later take on the world by storm as Muhammad Ali.
The Ceylon team was billeted with the USA team at this accommodation, which had a separate exclusive restaurant, where the two teams mixed together often at meal times, where Clay held forth in friendliness to all.
As Liyanage recalls “a little noisy, but immensely likeable, displaying extreme self-confidence, entertaining those at the restaurant as well as at his training sessions, where we too, did our training”.
Another unforgettable memory for Liyanage is watching from a ringside seat, Clay fight in the very same ring that he fought in. As Liyanage recounts, fortunately, for himself, not at the same time!
Clay won the preliminary bouts quite easily but in the final he came up against a very experienced and formidable fighter in Zinged Pietrrykowski of Poland who was a three-time European Champion and the bronze medallist from the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956. Clay out-boxed this veteran fighter to claim the Olympic gold medal in the Light Heavy Weight category.
A few have enjoyed the rare privilege to have rubbed shoulders with ‘The Greatest’ Muhammad Ali as a fellow competitor at one of the greatest sporting events. And so for this oldest living Sri Lankan Olympian Sumith Liyanage, the memories roll on, of great times, great doings, great friendships forged and cherished events and experiences.
Come the Paris Olympics 2024 next month, it will be time once again for this sprightly 88-year-old ‘Olympian’ Sumith Liyanage, to once again don the gloves and relive and savour those memories of those great milestones of unforgettable times, reminding us all that “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
