Mozambique’s Tiago Muxanga is upbeat ahead of his Olympic Games debut in Paris.
🇫🇷 Countdown to 2024 Paris Olympic Games, July 27- August 10
MUXANGA MAKES DEBUT
▪️It’s Mozambique’s fifth appearance in the Olympic Games boxing event Mozambique’s Tiago Muxanga is upbeat ahead of his Olympic Games debut in Paris
Mozambican Commonwealth Games light- middleweight silver medallist Tiago Muxanga (pictured during a training session in France) is upbeat ahead of his Olympic Games debut in Paris.
The 23-year-old boxing sensation has stamped his authority in the ring since he started representing the national team in 2022.
Muxanga and Alcinda Dos Santos are Mozambique representatives and among the 24 African boxers who will do battle in the Paris Olympics.
They’ve pitched camp in Dax in southwestern France to put in the finishing touches in their preparations under coach, Lucas Sinoia, himself a two-time Olympian.
“Training is going on well. Thank God we are working hard to bring good results to Africa and my beloved country Mozambique,” Muxanga told me in an interview from their training base.
With the Commonwealth Games silver medal under his belt as well as silver in the Mandela African Boxing Cup, gold in Zone 4 Championships and a bronze in the IBA Silver Belt series in Slovenia, Muxanga is now hardened for the big stage.
“I’m ready to fight any boxer in Paris, none of them scares me, I’m here for a medal,” said Muxanga, the Mozambican top male boxer.
Among the tough boxers in Muxanga’s weight class are top-seeded light-middleweight Shannan Davey of Australia, second seed Mexico’s Verde Alvarez and third seed Japan’s Okazawa Sewan, a gold medallist in the 2021 World Championships in Belgrade.
Muxanga, who is in the same weight category with Egypt’s fifth-seeded Omar Elawady, is grateful to the IOC Tripartite Commission for giving him a wild card. He’s one of the four African boxers who benefited from the universality quota which had nine places up for grabs, five for women and four for men.
“I thank the IOC for giving me a wild card to be here, I deserve to be in the Olympics because I know I’m a good boxer,” said Muxanga who hinted he might turn pro after the Paris Games.
Mozambique will be making the fifth appearance in the Olympic Games boxing tournament in Paris. So far the Southern African country has yet to win a boxing medal in the Olympics but they’ve made their presence felt in world boxing under the astute leadership of industrious federation president Gabriel Jr.
Their Olympic debut was at the 1988 Games which I covered for the Kenya Times newspaper in Seoul, South Korea.
Current head coach Lucas Sinoia was one of the three boxers who made history as the first Mozambican boxers to take part in the Olympics.
Sinoia, boxing at welterweight, got a bye to the second round, losing to Spain’s Javier Martinez. The other two Mozambican boxers in Seoul were flyweight Archer Fausto and bantamweight Alberto Machaze.
Sinoia was Mozambique’s sole representative in Mozambique’s second participation in the Olympic Games in 1996 in Atlanta in the United States. He lost his first fight in the round of 32 to Bulgaria’s welterweight Vadim Mezga.
Sinoia later switched to coaching, and has made a big impact, nurturing Mozambican glamour girls Alcinda Dos Santos and Rady Gramane.
Light-flyweight Juliano Maquina was the sole Mozambican boxer in their third appearance in the Olympic Games in London 2012 with Alcinda and Gramane making their Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the fourth time for the Mozambican boxers at the world’s premier multi-sport event.
Alcinda, the first ever Mozambican female boxer to step into the ring at the Olympics, got a bye to the last 16, making short work of Kenya’s Elizabeth Akinyi whom she stopped in the second round of the welterweight bout. She subjected the Kenyan to two standing eight counts in the second round before the referee waved it off. Alicinda however lost on points in the quarter-finals to China’s two-time world silver medallist Gu Hong who settled for silver in the finals.
Gramane too started her Olympic journey in the last 16, outpointing Ecuador’s middleweight Erica Pachito but lost on points in the quarters to Russia’s big punching two-time world champion Zemfira Magomedalieva.
Gramane, two-time Africa champion and world bronze medallist in 2022, shares her experience in her Olympic Games debut.
“My debut at the Olympic Games was very memorable, my coach (Lucas Sinoia) throughout the intense training in Namaacha, a district in the province of Maputo, always reminded us that the Olympic Games are very difficult and cannot be compared to any championship and that we had to train hard to succeed in Tokyo.
“I went to my first game aware that everyone who wanted to win a medal at the Olympics would play hard and the game was really tough, then I went to the quarter finals with a Russian boxer. I lost on points, it was the hardest fight. She was a complicated boxer with a different boxing style than anyone else I fought with, she confused me. I ended up realizing what my coach said about the Olympics. At first I thought it was an exaggeration but I experienced it and believed what my coach told me about the Olympics. I felt it in my skin.”
The southpaw Gramane was all set to make her second appearance in the Olympics when she got a wild card with compatriot Tiago Muxanga. For unknown reasons, she was later removed from the beneficiaries of the universality quota.
All eyes are now on Gramane’s bosom friend and a southpaw like her Alcinda Dos Santos and Muxanga. Will they give Mozambique their first ever Olympic Games boxing medals? Nothing is impossible under the sun. The two boxers have what it takes to excel in a tournament of this magnitude.
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