Dian gets re-elected to Asian Boxing Confederation

Dian Gomes who is currently an Executive Committee member of the Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC), has been appointed as a member of the Board of Directors in the Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC) for a four-year term at the ASBC Extraordinary Congress held in Amman, Jordan, the Boxing Association of Sri Lanka announced. Dian is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the International Boxing Association (IBA), the supreme and most prestigious global association dedicated to boxing. Pichai Chunhavajira of Thailand was elected as the President of ASBC to lead the 44 countries in the Asian region.

Dian whose name is synonymous with the renaissance of the sport in the country is a former Royal College flyweight boxing champion. A former president of CIMA Sri Lankan Division, Dian has been a leading corporate personality for the better part of three-decade, first as a Group Director of MAS Holdings and then as Chairman of Hela Clothing, where he was instrumental in promoting not only boxing but other sports and supporting rural athletes. He currently serves as the Honorary Consul of Georgia in Sri Lanka and on the Board of Nestle Lanka PLC.

The incumbent president of the boxing governing body, Dian was credited with the success achieved at the international level by Anuruddha Ratnayake who went on to compete at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He was the first Sri Lankan after 40 years to compete at an Olympics. Dian also gets a huge chunk of the credit for the three medals the country won at the Commonwealth Games 2018 in Gold Coast, Australia after a lapse of 68 years.

He became the first Sri Lankan to be appointed to the Commonwealth Advisory Board of Sports in 2014 and also the first Sri Lankan to be appointed to the Executive Committee of the Asian Boxing Federation in 2019. He has served in the world body first as a member of the Finance Commission, the marketing commission, and the women’s commission.