Payao Poontarat
Thai boxer, politician (1957-2006)
Payao Poontarat (Thai: พเยาว์ พูลธรัตน์, RTGS: Phayao Phuntharat, pronounced [pʰā.jāw pʰūːn.tʰā.rát]; October 18, 1956 – August 13, 2006) was a Thai boxer who, at the age of 18, won the bronze medal in the men's Light flyweight (-48 kg) category at the 1976 Summer Olympics. He was the first Thai athlete to win an Olympic medal in any sport. After retiring from boxing, Payao Poontarat briefly competed in Muay Thai. His professional Muay Thai record is 10-3-1 (3 KOs).
1976 Olympic results
Below is the record of Payao Poontarat, a Thai light flyweight boxer who competed at the 1976 Montreal Olympics:
Defeated Remus Cosma (Romania) by decision, 4-1
Defeated Aleksandr Tkachenko (Soviet Union) by decision, 3-2
Defeated György Gedó (Hungary) by decision, 4-1
Lost to Li Byong-Uk (North Korea) referee stooped contest in the second round (was awarded a bronze medal)
Boxing career
Born in the village of Bang Sapan, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Phayao Poontarat came from a poor family. As a child, he sold flowers in the resort city of Pattaya to help support his younger siblings. Like many poor boys in Thailand, he took up Muay Thai, and he proved to be a gifted boxer under the ring name "Petchpayao Sitkrutat" (เพชรพะเยาว์ ศิษย์ครูทัศน์).
He switched to international boxing and won a place on the Thai Olympic team in 1976. Though he finished with a bronze medal, Phayao gained attention by defeating the 1972 Olympic gold medal winner, Gyogy Gedo, in the quarter-finals. He trained hard for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but his hopes for a gold were ended by the United States led boycott over of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
“Payao Poontarat” enters the record as thai boxer, politician (1957-2006). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Payao, Poontarat and Thai can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Payao Poontarat” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Payao, Poontarat and Thai provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q260409. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2006, 1976 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Payao Poontarat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.