Dr. Coach Ofori Asare, head coach of the National Boxing Team, the Black Bombers and Hitters has in an interview with the Ghana Boxing Federation media given his report on the journey so far in Dakar, Senegal.
Ghana took a 12 member team; 7 men (Black Bombers) and 5 women (Black Hitters) to Dakar for the African Olympic Boxing Qualifiers.
Out of the twelve, eleven are already out. Theophilus Allotey, a flyweight who is set to face Ala Eddine Zidi (Tunisia) in the quarter finals later today, is the only hope to grab a spot to Paris Olympics next year.
Below is the full report from Coach Ofori Asare:
“Ghana, so far its not easy for us, we have only one boxer in who is in contention for the flyweight and we hope he goes further.”
On the reason for the poor performance
“You see this kind of olympic competition, a whole lot of pressure is on everybody and some countries also do so many things, and officiating is also one other thing that is very very difficult.
“We were trying our best but some of our fight decisions wasn’t fair for us. And some of the coaches also as I see, there are so many things that they know very well that it’s wrong but they’re doing it and I don’t know.”
“Proper arrangements have not been done to watch on those things, you see some of them breaking gloves, some of them doing so many things, we didn’t come here with that plan. But we hope we go further, we want to qualify at least one person here. We’ve not given up yet and we’re pushing.”
We ask for the prayers of Ghanaians that it’s not over yet. Qualifying to the Olympics has always been difficult for us because we don’t have the people in there, officials, as for some they are inside the organisation, they’re inside the officiating, they’re everywhere, but we don’t have people like that there. It’s like we go in with only the athletes and then try our best.”
“We’ll make sure we finish well and then for the next qualification. With this qualification, we have only one, the men and that makes it very difficult.”
On the Black Hitters and the new Bombers
“Our ladies, we know that we are now building the ladies. Because of the African Games, we’re trying to prepare them, all of them are new except Ornella Sathoud but Sathoud also got sick here and it has affected her performance. But for now, we know that we’ve created a good base and our next qualification it shall be well for us.
“At least most of the boxers who came here, they’ve learnt, some of them have never been to African competition like that. Commey has never seen African competition and he sees that it’s different from the Commonwealth as well as the world championship.”
What Africa Qualifications are like compared to other international competitions
“So new things are here, Africans are more rough and everything here is not something like you go to the Olympics or you go to the commonwealth so let’s see ourselves to the end of this competition and the next competition which the pressure can come down small and also the quota is big there so we’ll be able to forge ahead and qualify more.
“But we’ve not given up, we’re still trying our best and we’ll want to go home with at least one qualification.”
By Winfred Worlanyo Siegu Yaw