🇫🇷 Countdown to 2024 Paris Olympic Games, July 27- August 10
SOUTH AFRICA TOPS OLYMPIC GAMES BOXING MEDAL CHART
▪️ _Kenya in second place with the first ever Olympic gold by a black African boxer Robert Wangila_
▪️ _To date only 13 African countries have won boxing medals in the Olympics_
South Africa is the most successful boxing nation in Africa at the Olympic Games with a total of 19 medals – six gold, four silver and nine bronze medals won by white boxers during the apartheid era.
South Africa’s first Olympic boxing gold medal came from bantamweight Clarence Walker at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
Walker was born on December 13, 1898, in Port Elizabeth, and he’s the first boxer from Africa to win a gold medal in the Olympics.
The last Olympic boxing medal for South Africa came via featherweight William Meyers at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
After the Rome Olympics, South Africa was kicked out from the Olympics because of its apartheid policies – denying indigenous black South Africans a chance to represent the national team – and was reinstated at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Interestingly, South Africa has yet to win a boxing medal since the 1960 Olympics.
Kenya is second on Africa’s Olympic Games boxing medals table with one gold, one silver and five bronze medals.
The late Robert Wangila (pictured), a truck driver then with Kenya Breweries, gave Kenya its five ever gold medal – and the only one so far – at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. The hard-hitting Wangila knocked out Frenchman Laurent Boudouani in the second round with a screaming right cross to the chin in the welterweight division.
Wangila thus became the first black African boxer to win a gold medal in the Olympic Games and the seventh African boxing gold medallist in the Olympics.
But in the ensuing excitement and jubilation that greeted Wangila’s astounding achievement in Seoul – I was among the African sports journalists who covered the Seoul Olympics making my debut in the Games – we overlooked the six gold medals won by the white South African boxers in the Olympics, and at first reported Wangila was the first African boxer to win an Olympic gold medal.
Later we gradually slotted in the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal on realizing we had overlooked the six Olympic boxing gold medals by the South Africans.
Besides Wangila’s gold, Kenya’s other finalist in the Olympics was one of Africa’s most prominent boxers, the legendary Philip Waruinge, the first Kenyan boxer to win an Olympic medal – a bronze at the 1968 Olympics and silver in Munich 1972.
Waruinge’s younger brother, Sammy Mbogwa, Dick “Tiger” Murunga, Ibrahim “Surf” Bilali and Chris “Bingwa” Sande won the other four bronze medals for Kenya for a total of seven medals in the Olympics which is indeed a feat of no mean achievement.
Algeria is in the third position with one gold, five bronze followed by fourth-placed Nigeria having won three silver and three bronze with fifth-placed Uganda on three silver and one bronze. Those are Africa’s top five boxing nations in the Olympic Games.
We now focus on others below the top five African boxing nations in the Olympics.
Ghana is sixth with one silver and three bronzes followed by Egypt one silver and two bronze, at number eight is Cameroon with a silver and bronze, Morocco ninth on four bronze medals, Tunisia 10th with two bronze medals while Mauritius, Niger and Zambia are jointly in the 11th position each winning one bronze medal.
Overall, only 13 African countries have won boxing medals in the Olympic Games so far.
We hope to see new winners in the Paris Olympic Games joining this prestigious group of African countries which have won Olympic boxing medals.
✍🏼 AFBC Communications