PH boxers look to strike gold amid IOC’s attempt to polish their sport

There are only minor concerns so far for the Philippine boxing team preparing for the Tokyo Olympics, including a dental procedure for Nesthy Petecio (left). —SHERWIN VARDELEON

From their training camp in a picturesque resort in Samui Island in Thailand, Olympians Irish Magno, Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam updated the Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines of their progress. They spoke with a lot of optimism, saying they faced only minor setbacks—the routine, less-than-niggling aches often associated with plunging into training from a long layoff.

“There’s also a scheduled root canal for Nesthy, but the doctors said it was nothing to worry about,” Ed Picson, the secretary general of the country’s boxing federation, said on Tuesday. “They are all in good spirits and are preparing hard for the Olympics.”

From a rented flat in Los Angeles, where he has set up camp, Eumir Felix Marcial also looked in good spirits in an interview with a government TV station program.

“If the Olympics were held this month, I’d already be ready,” Marcial told PTV’s Team Pilipinas in Filipino over the weekend.

The four-person boxing team, which some argue has one of the best shots at ending the country’s quest for an Olympic gold, has a little more time than that.

Starting on Tuesday, there will be 100 days left before the opening ceremony of the troubled Tokyo Olympics. For the boxers, it is a few days more before a competition milestone. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has set up a task force specifically to run its boxing tournament after it had stripped the sport’s international federation (Aiba) of recognition.

In 2019, the IOC stripped the Aiba of Olympic hosting duties following its report that showed that the federation posed serious “legal, financial and reputational risks to the IOC and the Olympic movement.” The Aiba had been hounded by unsavory reports of corruption, mismanagement and links to organized crime at the time it was suspended by the IOC.

Thomas Bach, the IOC president, installed Morinari Watanabe, the head of the international gymnastics federation, as the chief of the task force that will oversee boxing in Tokyo. The IOC has warned the Aiba to clean up its act or risk its sport losing a slot in the Paris Olympics and even beyond.

“The IOC wants to clean up the sport and wants to make a good example in Tokyo,” Picson said.

It will be under these circumstances that the Philippine boxing squad will be seeking to finally win an Olympic gold medal. While it would be too early to say judging will be error-free, there is comfort in knowing that the IOC is trying to put boxing’s controversial results behind it.

“We can be confident in the fact that the IOC will do everything it can to make sure results are more agreeable to everyone, win or lose,” Picson said.

The Philippines has won silver twice courtesy of Anthony Villanueva (1964) and Onyok Velasco (1996). Velasco’s defeat in the Atlanta Games boxing final caused a lot of uproar in the country.

It would be too early, too, to tell whether that augurs well for the country’s gold hunt in the sport. At the very least, it would mean one thing less to worry about for the national boxing squad, which can focus solely on training and competing without worrying about the sport’s international politics in the background.

From Samui Island, the three Olympians—who are part of a 10-boxer, five-coach crew in Thailand—headed to Muakkek, an hour away from Bangkok, last April 10 to resume training. They will stay there until they fly to India for the Asian elite championships on May 21.

Marcial will hook up with the national squad in India.

“Being in the Asian championships would mean a lot because it would allow me to readapt to the Olympic-style of scheduling where you fight every day or several times in a week,” Marcial said. “It would be a good exposure since a lot of those who have also qualified for the Olympics will be there [in India].”

“It will give me a chance to see if my training here [in the US] has really helped. If I see that there’s no improvement, I would still have time to adjust [for the Olympics].”

Picson said that after the Asian championships, there “is still enough time” to further sharpen the squad for the Tokyo mission.

They have a hundred days, more or less. INQ