His death yesterday follows that of hockey icon Wilfred “Freddie” Vias, 94, and sprinter Zainuddin Wahab, 74, on June 7.
The passing of Vias and Theseira leaves P Alagendra, 93, (hockey) and M Harichandra, 91, (athletics) as the country’s oldest living Olympians.
Vias, Alagendra and Harichandra competed in the 1956 Melbourne Games, Theseira at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics while Zainuddin ran the 100m and 200m at Munich in 1972.
Tributes, led by the King, flowed for Theseira, with many describing him as the father of Malaysian fencing who developed fencers and brought the sport to national notice.
He was an enduring personality who flourished as a fencer, fencing master, boxer, weightlifter, bodybuilder, classical guitarist and ballroom dancer.
Long before his fencing exploits, he was Melaka bantamweight boxing champion in 1949 and a finalist in the Mr Melaka bodybuilding competition in 1956.
His accolades in sport drew many enthusiasts to him and over the past six decades, he had under his tutelage an impressive roll of fencers, weightlifters, bodybuilders, classical music students and ballroom dancers.
Among them was bodybuilder Clancy Ang, the first Malaysian to win the Mr Universe title in 1962.
In his immediate family, Theseira’s daughters, Kelene and Kessy, took after him and represented Melaka in fencing.
His grandson, Lester Seow, said his grandfather’s love for music was embraced by his mother Kelene who is now a piano teacher in Australia.
“My brother Lucas and I picked up classical guitar but we are nowhere near grandpa who was a guitar virtuoso and enchanted many with his singing, including Japanese songs.
“He was proficient in Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese besides being fluent in English and Bahasa Melayu,” Seow said.
“The wide interests of grandpa and his virtues of family love has had a great impact on every family member, each of whom strive to follow in his footsteps.”
Staying fit and alert into his 90s
Theseira learned fencing from books, and as a nonagenarian, he was still giving lessons to enthusiasts of the sport.
Until his last days, he was still giving math, science and English tuition to children to keep his mind alert and continued lifting weights to stay fit.
In 2018, he wrote to then sports minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, offering his services for free to the national fencing team “for the love of Malaysia”.
His proficiency in the Japanese language, which he learnt in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and French, which he picked up during a stint at a fencing academy in Paris in the early 1960s, were what got him to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.
The 34-year-old medical assistant officer at the Melaka general hospital had arrived in Tokyo two days before the fencing competition started, only to find that his name was not on the entry list.
A Malaysian official did not send his entry form to Tokyo and since no entries were allowed 10 days before the start of the competition, his heart sank.
When his appeal was heard, he spoke to the Frenchman who was chief of the world fencing body in French, and impressed the head of the Japan Olympic Committee by speaking Japanese.
They were sympathetic to his cause and his name was officially inserted into the fixture a night before the competition began.
However, his outing at the Olympics was not a memorable one as he did not advance from the group stages in epee, sabre and foil.
Theseira once related that his selection to the Olympics saw the intervention of the country’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, who upon realising he was a minority, said: “I want that Melaka-born Portuguese Eurasian to hold the Malaysian flag.”
Theseira was among many Eurasian men and women who excelled in sport in the 1950s and 1960s, and whose sporting contributions to the country acted as a unifying factor for the community.
Besides the Tokyo Olympics, he competed at the 1970 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, the 1986 world championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, and at the SEAP Games (now SEA Games).
Theseira’s love for fencing saw him set up the Malayan Amateur Fencing Association in 1959. After it became the Malaysian Fencing Federation in 1981, he was president until 1985.
He was also the founder of several state fencing associations and the co-founder of the Southeast Asian Fencing Federation, Oceanic Fencing Confederation and Asian Fencing Confederation.
His lifetime contribution to the sport earned him the title, Professor of Fencing and life membership in the Italian and Spanish Academy of Fencing Masters.
The master of many skills was married to Katherine Tan, who died in 2006, and leaves Kelene and Kessy, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Theseira’s wake is taking place today and tomorrow, from 10am to 10pm, at the Xiao En Centre (Hall 8), Jalan Kuari, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. The funeral service will be at 11am on Tuesday, before he is taken to the DBKL Crematorium for cremation.