Ninvalle focused on advancing boxing after miss at Olympic qualifiers

A four-member Guyanese boxing team competed in Bangkok, Thailand over the past week, in hopes of securing a spot in the 2024 Paris Olympics this July.
However, fortune was not on the side of the Guyanese as Desmond Amsterdam, Emmanuel Pompey and Joel Williamson lost their opening bouts against the Dominican Republic’s Christian Javier Pinales, Mauritius’ Louis Richarno Colin and Russia’s Georgia Kushitashvilli respectively.
Keevin Allicock, however, had better chances winning his first bout against Guatemala’s Jose Felipe after the referee stopped the contest, but fell in a 4-1 split decision battle with Turkey’s Batuhan Ciftci on Tuesday.

President of the Guyana Amateur Boxing Association (GBA), Steve Ninvalle expressed his content with the Guyanese group, noting that they did their best.
“I think they did of their best. We would’ve made sure that we had the highest possible training for them. My heart grieves for Keevin Allicock, because I know exactly what he went through. I looked at the fight, I think he did exceedingly well, but have to go back to that drawing board. The good thing is that most of these guys are quite young as it relates to boxing,” Ninvalle related to media operatives in an invited comment on Wednesday.
Looking at the wider region, Ninvalle highlighted that more needed to be done for the sport in the Caribbean in order to replicate the feat of Michael Parris, who remains the only Olympic medal winner in the Region.
Ninvalle highlighted, “If you look across the Caribbean; the Caribbean would not have been able to go further. Trinidad and Tobago sent five boxers, and they would’ve stayed in Thailand for three weeks and they were not able to go forward.
“It tells us that, collectively as a Caribbean region, that we need to sit and start discussing how we as a Region, not Guyana alone as country, but as a Region how do we approach boxing. Maybe it needs to be something like how cricket is being approached, whereby we have higher figures trying to determine where we go as a Region. Up to now, Michael Parris remains the only medal for Caricom that has been won at the Olympics in boxing and that spells a bigger picture,” the GBA President added.
Focusing on his charges, Ninvalle detailed plans to advance the level of competition locally.
Ninvalle divulged, “What we will continue to do, from the Guyana Boxing Association, is to continue exposing the boxers and especially the young ones. We have started an aggressive programme for the young boxers and especially for the females.”
“We now have a group of females, larger than we’ve ever had in boxing before and we intend to aggressively deal with that though our U16 programmes and when we have our national novice, which is coming up in another week or so, we intend to have overseas participation in that, in order to try to raise the level for our local boxers,” he went on to share.
After all, all is not lost in the realm of Olympic boxing since there is still a chance of a Guyanese boxer qualifying through the tripartite system, which had granted table tennis player Chelsea Edghill a spot back at the Tokyo 2020 Games.