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On This Day

Kyle, The Youngest Abeysinghe Brother

Kyle Abeysinghe who turns 25 years today, represented Sri Lanka at the Olympics last year as the third sibling pair in the country's history, following his older brother Matthew.

The Sidelines

• 3 min read
Kyle, The Youngest Abeysinghe Brother

In the history of Sri Lankan sports, only 3 pairs of siblings have ever competed in the Olympics, the Jayasuriya's (Henry and Chandrasena), the Raheem's (Mayumi and Kimiko) and finally, the Abeysinghe's whose youngest sibling Kyle turning 25 years today, participated in the Paris Olympics!

In fact, today's article is not just a regular birthday story but part of an interview conducted last year which was facilitated by the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka, just before the Paris Games. For now, let's get to know about Kyle.

Swimming in the shadows of his brothers

Born on this day in 2000, young Kyle was born to Manoj Abeysinghe and mother Laura as their fourth and youngest son. Having been born in the US, he came back to his father's country of birth at the age of 8 and started his schooling at Asian International School.

His older brothers Matthew, Andrew and Dillon had already established themselves as a force to reckon with, with the guidance of their father Manoj who is the Head Coach of Killer Whale Academy. It was only a few years later he understood the gravity of what his brothers had achieved having represented Sri Lanka, and the pressure to perform came back to him.

International Swimming Career

Moving to Wycherley International School in 2014 and continuing his competitive swimming, he was part of the South Asian Games contingent in 2016 winning 4 medals, the South Asian Swimming Championships the same year winning the same number of medals and broke 2 National Records at the FINA World Swimming Championship.

Then in 2017, he won two Silver medals at the Youth Commonwealth Games in Bahamas, the only athlete to return back with any medal that year and in 2018, represented Sri Lanka in both the Asian and Commonwealth Games. However, things went downhill for him as it took him as long as 4 years to get back into competitive swimming again...

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