Slim chance for SA boxers to qualify for Paris Olympics

There is a glimmer of hope that SA can still produce a miracle and have amateur fighters qualifying for the 2024 Olympics that will take place in Paris from July 26 to August 11, says SA National Amateur Boxing Organisation (Sanabo) president Siyabulela Mkhwalo.

SA was last represented in the global sporting showpiece in 2008 in Beijing. Jackson Chauke was the only amateur boxer there. The flyweight boxer was eliminated in his first fight.

“There is an arrangement that our fighters will go to the second qualifiers towards May and beginning of June and that is where we will get the answer if indeed SA will have boxers in the Olympics,” said Mkhwalo.

“For now there is no one who qualified. We had a virtual meeting with coaches last week and there is a plan for a training camp for the African Games, which will be a platform to gauge the readiness of our fighters.

“There is also the Mandela Cup, which will take place in Durban in April. That will be the last test.”

Mkhwalo said national team coaches activated what he referred to as “one main thing”, which is not having enough time to be with fighters in training camps.

“The organisation (Sanabo) also did not have adequate resources to help the team to be ready for qualification,” he said.

“That is the main issue they highlight

ed in their report, let alone that the competition was at another level because boxers from other countries had adequate time and support to prepare.”

Due to politics, SA was banned from participating after the 1960 Olympics. South African amateur fighters, which included black fighters who were prejudiced by not being allowed to represent SA from 1920, were left out in the cold and amateur boxing suffered.

SA was re-admitted to the Olympics in 1992 when the Games were held in Barcelona, Spain. For the first time black South African fighters could be selected.

Unfortunately in Barcelona and Atlanta, US, in 1996, South Africans failed badly with no representatives going beyond the second round in the competition.

At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, South African representatives, Phumzile Matyhila, Jeffrey Mahebula and Danie Venter, were all eliminated in the second round.

At the 2004 Games in Athens the three South African representatives – featherweight Ludumo Galada, Bongani Mahlangu and Khotso Motau – failed to progress beyond the first round.

Then Chauke in 2008 in Beijing. SA had two representatives at the 2012 London Olympics, bantamweight, Ayabonga Sonjica and welterweight, Siphiwe Lusizi.