Amateur boxers returning to the ring

While the boxing gym at the National Stadium remains closed, a few others such as Belfield and Surfside have reopened.

President of Barbados Boxing Association (BBA) Richard Atwell said that recently the local governing body met virtually to decide the way forward for the sport now that restrictions related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have been eased.   

One of the things he said they discussed was the annual Carlton Hope and Lionel Hall Boxing Tournament held in November which also coincides with the Barbados Independence Invitational Games (BiiG) hosted by the Barbados Olympic Association (BOA).

During the telephone interview, Atwell told Barbados TODAY that they were working towards getting teams from Canada and England to be part of the event later this year.

“We are trying to get some numbers in terms of boxers who would be ready for the Carlton Hope and Lionel Hall Boxing Tournament, usually scheduled for November. Carlton Hope is part of the Barbados Independence Invitational Games. So BOA had actually sent out asking if we will have enough athletes to put on an event, so we are getting that information to give them a yes or no.

“Initially, the original plan before COVID came in was to have two teams who had confirmed they were going to come down in November, one from England and one from Canada. So we have to see if those teams are still on track. And these are not national teams, these are combined gyms that were coming down to take part in the tournament.

So, we are just touching base with those teams out of Canada and England,” he explained.

The COVID-19 situation did not only affect the athletes who were unable to train but Atwell said that local competitions normally held at the National Stadium every six weeks were not possible during the national curfew hours. Therefore BBA is hoping to make up for time lost.

“[With] that lack of competition, fitness and awareness would be missing if you don’t have a significant amount of event time between now and November… We actually have to see if we can get in some of those local events in the stadium before the Carlton Hope and Lionel Hall Boxing Tournament. 

“As long as everything remains safe so to speak, as long as we don’t have any big recurrence [of COVID-19] because I have heard of occurrences in the United States and some other parts of the world,” he said.

Besides the local BiiG event, Atwell said regionally they were looking at the Caribbean championship in December. Barbados finished runners up in 2019 to hosts Trinidad and Tobago.

Unsure whether this year’s Caribbean games will take place in St. Martin, Atwell stated that failing that the alternative would be Suriname or Guyana to host this year’s championship.

Elite boxers such as Jabali Breedy, Charles Cox, Ajayi Jones and Kimberley Gittens are hoping to qualify for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics and Atwell said now that restrictions had eased he expected that sometime soon they would be back in the gym working with national coach Gary Bowen and his assistants Shawn Worrell and Laurence Hunte. 

“There is a plan for all national athletes to train under the national coach Gary Bowen at the stadium, at least three days a week. We now have to get that enforced because when Coronavirus came in everything was basically shut down. So the national team that we put together before and are keeping in place, especially the Olympic hopefuls, will be training at the stadium, with the technical team,” Atwell said.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb