Boxers To Train In Azerbaijan For London Olympics

Nigerian boxers are to train in Azerbaijan or Cuba, ahead of the London 2012 Olympics, the Secretary of the Nigeria Boxing Federation (NBF), Patrick Uwagbale, said at the weekend in Mozambique.

Uwagbale told the Tidesports source at the ongoing 10th All Africa Games in Maputo that the boxers’ performances at the competition showed the need for the tour.

‘’It was not totally okay. Their performance did not meet our expectations in terms that no gold medal was won.

‘’Three of the boxers who reached the finals had injuries from their earlier fights and this affected their performance,’’ he said.

The NBF scribe said that the boxers who made it to the final were defeated because they were technically deficient.

Uwagbale said that the technical team would be fine-tuned to yield the required results at the 2012 Games.

‘’Any athlete that reaches the final of an event is a top-level athlete but if defeated at that stage, it means his opponent had a superior technical depth,’’ he said.

Uwagbale dismissed the claim by a Lagos State boxing coach that the boxers did not perform optimally because coaches they were familiar with did not handle them at the Games.

He attributed the federation’s achievements at the sports fiesta to the participation of the boxers in an international tournament in Ghana before the Games.

‘’The international tourney paid off because it exposed the boxers to competition.

‘’Some of the opponents our boxers defeated at the semi-final stage were those they met at the tourney.

‘’If we had gone for a training tour without the competition, we might not have achieved what we did,’’ Uwagbale said.

The NBF secretary said that the boxers’ performances in Mozambique indicated that the sport was gradually bouncing back to reckoning in Nigeria.