He was one of the pioneer swimmers and one of the golden products to come out of St. Joseph’s College and move into Olympic immortality. He is none other than Tony Williams and not many people know of him and his exploits at a time when sportsmen and women were not caught up in politics and made all the sacrifices to do something for their country without asking or expecting a red cent.
Some of his contemporaries were Desmond Templar, Shabbir Jafferjee, Ian Ebert, Errol Graham and Fred De Niese.
“It is a very nostalgic feeling to go back to where I started at the time and I feel very proud of the fact that I was the first Joe to represent Sri Lanka at an Olympic Games,” said Williams in an interview with the Sunday Observer. Williams represented Sri Lanka then Ceylon at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne and at the 1960 Games in Rome.
Williams was 21 years old when he contested his first international meet which was the Asian Games where he bowed out as the sixth best swimmer and subsequently represented Ceylon at the Commonwealth Games and finished as the 10th best on the list.
He recalled the hand played by the late rector of St. Joseph’s College Fr. Peter Pillai who laid the foundation for the country’s first 50-metre Olympic size swimming pool in 1950 that turned out to be an iconic achievement by the school. The pool was declared open by Lord Soulbury who was the last Governor General of Ceylon.
Fr. Peter Pillai also enlisted the services of a professional coach from Britain to train the Joes who continue to be a major force in swimming in the country. “At that time the usual practice was for a gym instructor or geography teacher to be the coach of swimming, but the rector (Fr. Peter Pillai) gave us Guy Thiedeman a professional Britisher.
He coached us well to reach international and Olympic standards,” recalled Williams who is extremely keen to reignit old friendships and meeting his buddies of a bygone golden era. He said that it did not take long for the Joes to dominate swimming, a record that they still jealously safeguard today.
Williams married a European lady Margret Burgess and the two parted ways with her demise in 2014.
Her wish was that her ashes be sprinkled in her birth place Nuwera Eliya which throughout history has come to be known as Little England for its architecture, climate and terrain.
Williams’ two sisters Indira and Sita schooled at St. Bridget’s Convent in Colombo and his father was Albert Williams who married an Austrian Erna Katherine who was an opera singer.
One of Williams’ swimming companions was Tara Bolling, the mother of Julian who became a household name at the 1991 South Asian Games in Colombo when he won five gold medals.
Note: Tony Williams can be contacted on 0724670103.