As Ghanaians celebrate Theo Allotey’s qualification to the round of 32, they’re also in awful pain following the humiliation of their super-heavyweight Mark Ahondjo.
He lost 5-0 to the more polished Mauritian 2011 and 2015 African Games champion Joseph Kennedy St Pierre (pictured) who is also a silver medallist at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and Rio Olympics quarter-finalist.
He now moves to the round of 32 for a date with Croatian Luka Pratljacic in what promises to be a keenly contested super-heavyweight encounter.
Four slots are available in the +92kg weight class. St Pierre is a favourite to grab one of them and bring joy to Africa, so far with 18 qualifiers.
After the continental qualifiers, 65 men and 75 women got their boarding passes for the Paris flight, and were joined by 49 more qualifiers – 28 men and 21 women – in the first world qualifiers in Italy for a total of 188 qualifiers so far.
After the Bangkok qualifiers, 51 boxers – 28 men and 23 women – will be on board before the IOC decides who gets the nine universality slots, five for women and four for men.According to IOC, the universality places are for athletes from under-represented National Olympic Committees.
The Paris Olympics will feature a gender balanced 248 boxers, 124 men and 124 women.
Ring insiders however argue IOC have watered down the Olympic Games boxing tournament with only six weight classes for women and seven for men to feature in the Paris Olympics with others accusing the IOC of favouring the female boxers.
Against this background of having only 13 weight divisions in Paris, some boxers feel they’ve been denied their right to participate in the Olympics Games through the unexplained reduction of weight classes and what they feel are unnecessary qualification tournaments.
The jury is out on this one.
AFB Communications