Olympic qualifiers: Embarrassing exit for Pakistani boxers

Pakistan’s chances of earning a direct place at the 2016 Rio Olympics are all but over as four of five national boxers failed to win their opening bouts at the world qualifiers in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The only boxer remaining in contention until the filing of this story was Tanveer Ahmed in the 75kg, who was due to compete against Korea’s Dongyun Lee in the second round of the preliminaries late yesterday. Naimatullah (56kg), Ahmed Ali (60kg), Syed Asif (52kg) and Awais Ali (81kg) lost their opening bouts after getting byes in the first round.

This was Pakistan’s last opportunity to book a berth for the Games that are scheduled to begin in August.

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“It has been far from a good run with four of our five boxers out of the competition now,” Pakistan Boxing Federation (PBF) Secretary Iqbal Hussain told The Express Tribune. “It’s definitely not what we wanted.”

With no training abroad and the PBF’s deal with a prospective Cuban coach having fallen through, the pugilists have been going through a tough time and made do with local coaches.

The boxers had also missed their Asian Olympic qualifiers in China in March.

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Hussain admitted that the fact that the federation was unable to send the players abroad for training is more to blame than the failure of the pugilists themselves.

“Four of our boxers lost because their opponents were better in the ring, they trained better than we did and their form was better than ours,” said Hussain. “We couldn’t send the boxers abroad to train. I know this is our fault. We’ve just wasted our four years and it hurts.”

Hussain added that the Pakistan Sports Board had spent Rs30 million for the 2012 Olympics, but did not lend any support this time around.

(Source: Express Tribune)