Category: Sports

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

မြန်မာ ဘော်လီဘော လက်ရွေးစင်

The Burma Selected team won the Gold Medal for Volleball at several SEAP (South East Asian Peninsula) Games.

SEAP Games ရွှေတံဆိပ်ရှင်

Gold Medal Winners

• 1961 Kyaw Nyunt (Captain)
• 1969
• 1975
• 1977
• 1979
• 1983 Khin Maung Win (Captain)

Updates

• Credit : U Tun Mra, U Kyaw Thiha

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Inya

My uncle took us to Inya Lakes. He taught us to float. We swam in the shallow waters. After swimming, we were treated with “Bu Thee Kyaw”.

RU Swimming Pool

The membership rules might have changed over the years. The pool was not Olympic size, but it was good enough for the early RU competitions for swimming, water polo & diving.

2nd SEAP Ganes

• Burma hosted the 2nd SEAP Games in 1961.
• Swimming & diving events were held at the then new National Swimming Pool.
• The Burmese team won most of the gold and silver medals.
• Tin Maung Ni (GBNF) won 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 4x100m freestyle events.
• Tin Maung Ni also won in the Asian Games. He competed in two Olympics. He passed away in his 30s.
• Mya Thee & Aung Than topped the 100m freestyle. Maung Kyi won the 100m breast.

• Two RU swimmers — Aye Kyaw and Derek Lynsdale — represented Burma.

Swimming Clubs

They include Kokkine and Mayo Marine.

RIT Swimmers

During our times, Htay Aung (M69) was the dominant swimmer at RIT and Inter-Institute. He later found his match in Lyn Aung Thet (IM1).

Saya U Hla Myint (Charlie, M65) led the RIT Swimming and Water Polo teams. Htay Aung, Han Sein (GBNF), Sein Myint, Moe Hein, Hla Kyaing and Win Maung (Lake) are some 69ers who represented RIT in swimming and water polo.

Htay Aung represented Burma in Water Polo at the 5th SEAP Games in 1969. His spouse Than Than (sprinter) won Gold Medals at SEAP and Asian Games.

Miscellaneous

Evolution

• Swimming techniques and swim wear have evolved over the years.
• Female swimmers have broken the record set up by Johnny Weissmuller (of Tarzan fame).

Mark Spitz (USA)

• Won seven golds in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
• Won 100m and 200m freestyle, 100m and 200m butterfly, 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays, and 4x100m medley relay.

Michael Phelps (USA)

• Won eight golds in a single Olympic and 20+ golds over multiple Olympics
• Swam Freestyle, Butterfly, Individual Medley & Relays

My Mom

• Her love for the water (floating and swimming in the Inya Lakes) probably caused me to enter the world a few days ahead of the due date.
• I can do front and back crawls, but not at the competitive level.

Richard Yu Khin (GBNF)

• He wrote about the tough training program by Mr. Matsuda to the Burmese swimmers led by Tin Maung Ni.
• He was good at Yachting & Swimming.
• He chose to represent Burma in Yachting. He won Gold Medal at 2nd SEAP Ganes with his senior partner U Maung Maung Lwin.
• He received a doctorate in Economics from Yale University.
• He passed away in Texas.

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Early Days

In the Weightlifting competitions, there were three categories:

• [Military] Press
• Snatch
• Clean and Jerk

Later Competitions

In the later competitions, there are only two categories:

• Snatch
• Clean and Jerk.

Medals

• There is a medal for
  each Catergory, and
  the best Total.

Olympics

U Zaw Weik

• “Thiri Pyan Chi” U Zaw Weik competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a member of the British India team.
• After Burma’s Independence, he founded the Burma Olympic Club.

U Aung Gyi

• In the 1972 Munich Olympics, U Aung Gyi set an Olympic record in the Flyweight division.

SEAP Games

• Burma won many Gold Medals.
• In 1969, Burma dominated the event.
• See posts by sons of U Ba Thein (Mandalay)

Five Bala (Strength / Prowess)

Kayabala ကာယဗလ

• “Kayabala” (Physical Prowess) is one of the five Bala (strength).
  It is complementary to
  “Nyanabala” (Mental),
  “Bawgabala” (Wealth),
  “Meiktabala” (Friendship), and
  “Carittabala” (Moral).

Members of Kayabala

• Kayabala U Shein was manager and mentor of U Zaw Weik.
• Kayabala U Than Tun and others continued to help with weightlifters and body builders.

Body Building

Early Maung Bama (Mr. Burma)

• Bohmu Maung Maung
• U Ba Kun
• U Sein Maung

RIT

• Saya Dr. Kyaw Sein (M65) headed and managed the RIT Weightlifting and Body Building team.

• RIT won trophies in the Inter-Institute Tournament.
• Ko Jimmy Kyin (T69), Ko Khin Win (EP69), Ko Than Htike (70) & Ko Thein Aung (Met72) are some well-known Weightlifters and Body Builders.
• Ko Thein Aung won “Set Hmu Maung” (Mr. RIT) in 1968.

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Newspaper clipping provided by U Tin Htoon

RUBC

Rangoon University Boat Club took part in the FEARA (Far Eastern Amateur Rowing Association) Regatta held at Hong Kong in November 1959.

U Tun Shein (Willie, Past Secretary)

He is Ko Lin Tun’s father and U Tin Win’s brother. He represented RUBC mostly as Timing Stroke. He is also a Sculler like U San Maung (Gerald). He won the Senior Novices in 1954 and became RUBC Gold. His Senior Novice crew include M. Hla Min (Mossaji, Gold), Than Nyun (George, Captain & Gold), Sao Hso Holm (Saw bwa lay, son of Arzani Sao San Tun) and Tin Htut (cox, multiple Novice winner, Captain & Gold). Four Golds out of Five members.

U Win Kyi

He is the son of Sayama Miss Hong Kong (Amelia Kyi, SPHS), older brother of U Min Kyi, and father of Ko Naymyo Thura. He usually rowed as 3 in 4+ (Coxed Fours) and 7 in 8+ (Coxed Eights).

U Tin Htoon (Past Captain)

He rowed as 2 for Ko Jimmy Saw Lwin and Ko Willie Saing in the early days. He later rowed as Timing Stroke and won ARAE trophies :

• Venables Bowl for Coxless Pairs at Calcutta in 1958 with Ko Harry Saing
• Willingdon Trophy for Coxed Fours at Colombo in 1960 with Ko Harry Saing, Ko Victor Htun Shein, Ko Sunny Teng and Ko Sein Htoon.

• He was Editor of the 40th Anniversary Issue and Chair of the 90th Anniversary Issue (where I wrote Prelude for each section, and three articles).
  
  His brothers include
• Saya U Tin U (Past Captain)
• Saya U Ba Than (Green)
• Dr. Myo Tint (Past Captain)
• Saya U Myo Min (Green)
• U Thaung Lwin (Past Captain)

Dr. Harry Saing (Htut Saing, Past Captain)

He rowed mostly as Bow. In the RUBC Annual Regatta of 1962, he rowed as Timing Stroke with U Win Kyi as 7 to train seven brand new Golds : Myo Tin, Micky Tan (Thein Aung), Htain Lin, Oung Kyaing, Winston Tun Thoung (Mehm Myo Thoung), Myo Myint and Tin Aung (Victor Wu).

He is the elder brother of Dr. Victor Saing (Aye Kyaw).

In the 90th Anniversary Issue, I wrote a tribute to him as a multi-sports athlete and scholar / professional.

U San Maung (Gerald, Past Secretary)

Hevrowed on the Stroke side before specializing in Sculls.

He served as Club Coach along with Ko Harry.

He is the elder brother of Ko Hardy (Yan Shin).

Dr. Hla Min (Eddie)

He was a Golden Cox.

He later coxed Defense crews.

He served BMH (Mingaladon Base Military Hospital) as Orthopedic Surgeon.

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

တက္ကသိုလ် အားကစား လက်ရွေးစင်များ

1961 အရှေ့တောင်အာရှ ကျွန်းဆွယ်
Second SEAP Games in 1961

Photo provided by Dr. Richard Yu Khin, who won a Gold Medal in Yachting with U Maung Maung Lwin

The University Athletes represented Burma in

• Athletics
• Badminton
• Swimming
• Table Tennis
• Tennis
• Volleyball
• Weightlifting
• …

လှေလှော်
Rowing

RUBC team won the Willingdon Trophy for Coxed Fours) at the 1960 ARAE (Amateur Rowing Association of the East) Regatta in Colombo

• Tin Htoon (Stroke)
• Sunny Teng (3)
• Sein Htoon (Cox)
• Victor Htun Shein (2, GBNF)
• Harry Saing (Bow, GBNF)

At the 1958 ARAE Regatta in Calcutta, RUBC team of Tin Htoon (Stroke) and Harry Saing (Bow, GBNF) won the Venables Bowl for Coxless Pairs.

ဘော်လုံး
Soccer / Foitball

Rangoon University (and later Rangoon University & Institutes) Soccer team won several trophies.

One photo shows the winners of the Burma Soccer Federation Knock Out Tournament in 1965 – 66.

Another photo shows an earlier team from 1954 – 55.

Sayas U Ba Toke, William Paw and Dr. Hla Thwin headed the University Sports Council and the University Football program.

ကြက်တောင်
Badminton

RIT Badminton Team led by Sai Kham Pan won the Inter-Institute Trophy. Saya U Thein Lwin (GBNF) was President of RIT Badminton Association.

မြို့ပတ် ပြေး
Cross-Country Race

Saw Maung Maung Htwe won two Gold medals: as winner of the Cross-Country Race and as leader of the RIT Team.

ဟော်ကီ
Hockey

Saya U Tin Hlaing (M, GBNF) managed the All Universities and Institutes Hockey Team, which won several trophies.

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ဘော်လုံး

ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်များ လက်ရွေးစင်
Selected for all Universitites & Institutes in Rangoon

1965 — 66

* ကျော်ထင် (မြို့ပြ 1967) Kyaw Htin (C67)

(နောက်) မြန်မာ့လက်ရွေးစင်

* စိုးမြင့်လွင် (လျှပ်စစ် 1968, ကွယ်လွန်) Soe Myint Lwin (EP68, GBNF)

(နောက်) မြန်မာ့လက်ရွေးစင်

* ကျော်ဆင့် (ချည်ထည် 1970, ကွယ်လွန်) Kyaw Sint (T70, GBNF)

(နောက်) ပဏာမ မြန်မာ့လက်ရွေးစင် — ဒဏ်ရာ ရ လို့ အငြိမ်းစား

(ယခင်) မြန်မာ Jr. Tennis ချန်ပီယန်

* မောင်မောင် (RIT Sports Officer, Burma Selected) Maung Maung

—

စိုးမြင့်လွင် Soe Myint Lwin (EP68, GBNF)

ခင်မောင်မြင့် (စက်မှု 1972, ကွယ်လွန်) Khin Maung Myint (John Tint, M72, GBNF)

• တက္ကသိုလ်များ & မြန်မာ့ လက်ရွေးစင်
• aka John Tint @ St.Paul’s High School

Feedback

Thann Htutt Aung

နောက်ပိုင်းမှာ

တက္ကသိုလ်များလက်ရွေးစင် ကိုပေါ်သန်းငြိမ်း နဲ့ ငွန်စန်းအောင်

မြန်မာ့လက်‌ရွေးစင်က သန်းတိုးအောင်ပေါ့

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

မြန်မာ့ လက်ရွေးစင် ဦးထွန်းမရ ရဲ့ မှတ်တမ်း

Memories of U Tun Mra, Burma Selected for Track and Field

ဦးထွန်းမရ Tun Mra

* ဖခင် — ဦးရွှေမရ Shwe Mra

* ဇနီး — ဒေါ်မေဘယ်မော် Maibelle Maw (ကွယ်)

1958 — ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်

Athletic Club (Track and Field)

* Captain — ကိုထွန်းမရ

* Vice Captain — ကိုတင်မောင်ဆွေ

* အတွင်းရေးမှူး — ကိုခင်မောင်လတ်

* တွဲဖက်အတွင်းရေးမှူး — R. မျိုးသိန်း

* ဘဏ္ဍာရေးမှူး — Miss မေဘယ်မော်

** ပြိုင်ပွဲ (တချို့)

* 1959 — All India Inter-Varsity Sports

* 1959 — ပထမ SEAP Games, ဘန်ကောက်

* 1961 — ဒုတိယ SEAP Games, ရန်ကုန်

4x100m လက်ဆင့်ကမ်း relay ရွှေတံဆိပ်

* RUBC လှေပြိုင်ပွဲ များ

* 1961 SEAP Games — RU က Burma Selected

* ကိုထွန်းမရ — တာတို Sprint

* ကိုကျော်မရ (ကွယ်လွန်) — တန်းကျော် Hurdles

* ကိုစိုးမရ — တုတ်ထောက်ခုန် Pole Vault

* မရ Mra Brothers

* Tun Mra

* Kyaw Mra

* Soe Mra

* Win Mra

* ပုံထဲမပါ — နောက် သုံးယောက်

* Maung Maung Mra

* Rai Mra

* Aung Mra

* ကိုထွန်းမရ (Captain) နဲ့ RU Athletic လက်ရွေးစင်များ ​

* ချစ်ကြည်ရေးပွဲ — အောင်ပွဲရ / ဂုဏ်ပြု

* သတင်းစာ

* 1959 All-India Inter-Varsity Sports

** အထွေထွေ

* ICS U Shwe Mra

Chief Secretary of Cabinet; UN

* သက်ကြီး မြန်မာ အားကစားသမား ပူဇော်ပွဲ

* SEAP Games — တံဆိပ်ရှင်များ

* လှေလှော် YUBC OMA — နာယက များ

* မြ / မရ / Mra