🇹🇭 Countdown to 2nd World Olympic Qualification Tournament in Thailand from May 24 to June 2, 2024
MAURITIUS REPRESENTED BY A THREE TEAM OF CRACK BOXERS
▫️The Indian Ocean Island nation will be represented by a crack team of three boxers with Richarno Colin aiming for his fourth appearance in the Olympics
Mauritius’ crack team of three boxers left today, May 18, for Thailand’s capital city Bangkok, host of the world’s final Olympic qualifiers.
The three-man team of light-welterweight Richarno Colin, light-middleweight Merven Clair and heavyweight Joseph Kennedy St-Pierre is led by Cuba’s Roberto Ibanez Chavez who has been the head coach of Mauritius national team since 2015.
St Pierre is making a comeback after being out of big-time boxing for a year due to injury.
He’s one of the most successful boxers in his country with two gold medals in the 2011 and 2015 African Games, a silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and made it to the quarter-finals of the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Merven Clair, a bronze medallist in the Mandela African Boxing Cup tournament, gold medal winner in the 2019 African Games and four-time national champion, has been to the Olympics twice in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. He’s the country’s 2019 Sportsman of the Year.
Merven and Colin are taking part in their third Paris Olympics qualifiers have unsuccessfully done so in the African and Italy qualifiers respectively.
Colin is eyeing his fourth participation in the Olympic Games to become the third African boxer to appear in the Olympics four times.
The Commonwealth Games silver medal winner is a multiple gold medallist in the African Games and African Championships. Colin’s latest medal is a gold he won in the inaugural Mandela African Boxing Cup tournament last month in Durban, South Africa where he beat homeboy John Paul Masamba with clinical efficiency in the final light-welterweight bout.
If he qualifiers in Bangkok, he will equal the record of Algerian light-heavyweight Abdelhafid Benchabla and Egypt’s middleweight Mohamed Hikal, the only two African boxers who have so far participated in the Olympic Games four times.
Benchabla appeared in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics as a light-heavy finishing at number 5 and at heavyweight in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics placing 9th overall.
Hikal first competed at the 2000 Olympics at light-middleweight and ranked 8th, 2004 Athens Olympics at welterweight ranked 9th, 2008 Olympics in middleweight ranked 17th and 2012 Olympics middleweight he was 16th.
After the Italy debacle during which all the 68 boxers from Africa failed to qualify, it’s now redemption time in this do-or-die qualifier for the African boxers in Bangkok with 51 slots available, 23 for women and 28 for men.
At the 1st World Olympics Qualification event in Busto Arsizio, Italy, from February 29 March 12, a total of 49 quota places – 21 for women and 28 for men – were up for grabs.
Paris Olympics will feature 248 boxers – 124 men and 124 women.
The 13 weight classes in this year’s Olympics:
MALE
Flyweight (51kg)
Featherweight (57kg)
Light-welterweight (63.5kg)
Light- middleweight (71kg)
Light-heavyweight (80kg)
Heavyweight (92kg)
Super-heavyweight (+92kg)
FEMALE
Flyweight (50kg)
Bantamweight (54kg)
Featherweight (57kg)
Lightweight (60kg)
Welterweight (66kg)
Middleweight (75kg)
📸 Mauritius boxers heading to Bangkok. From left Merven Clair, coach Roberto Ibanez Chavez, Richarno Colin and Joseph Kennedy St-Pierre.
✍🏼 AFBC Communications