Olympic boxing hopes on the ropes

BRENDON O'HAGEN/Sunday Star-Times

DOWN FOR THE COUNT: New Zealand boxing is said to have hit rock bottom after none of its fighters managed to qualify for the Olympic Games at the recently completed Oceania Championships.

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In years to come, the just-completed Oceania boxing championships may be viewed as the best thing to happen to the sport in this country.

That is hard to imagine now, given New Zealand's disastrous showing in Samoa, where none of the 11 fighters managed to qualify for the Olympic Games. But in order to go forward, sometimes you need to hit rock bottom and that is where team manager, and former national coach, Dr John McKay, concedes boxing is now.

Blackball middleweight, Nathan McEwen, was the only New Zealand fighter to qualify for a final, where he lost 17-3 to Australia's Jarrod Fletcher, while Canterbury hope Yamiko Chinula was eliminated by Commonwealth Games heavyweight champion Bradley Pitt 23-3 in the semi-finals.

"In a word, the results were disappointing," McKay told The Press from Apia yesterday.

"I think we had a belief that probably two, possibly three, of the boys may have reached the final and/or won gold medals and I would say lack of preparation was the biggest reason why they didn't.

"They only had one weekend training camp before they came away and they should've been in an intensive training camp for probably 10 days prior.

"I also think the lack of quality opponents in the lead-up was an issue. The boys that went to the world championships at least had some competition, albeit it was one or two bouts max, but the world championships were in October and we're now at the end of April and there was nothing in between.

"I might be putting my neck in a noose here, but that doesn't really bother me. As I see it, we need to totally regroup and really start again. We need a structured high-performance programme put in place and that needs to happen straight away," said McKay.

"I'm not on the national executive any more, but from talking to two of the executive members that are here in an official capacity with the team, they're of a similar mind that a strategic plan has to be put in place and that we really need to start again from scratch.

"As a former national coach, I thought I'd left the high-performance plans and the systems in place and I don't know where those plans disappeared to.

"What I do know is that the whole thing needs to be restructured because it's very disappointing we don't have a single boxer representing New Zealand at an Olympic Games for the first time in a very long time."

The results at these championships make McKay's assessment hard to argue. What's more difficult is ensuring his recommendations are followed through.

"Funding is the major issue, there's no way around that," he said.

"What it's going to take is for the boxing association to take charge and get all the provincial associations working in together.

"If we can get that sort of co-operation, then it says to people that we really do mean business.

"To me, it all comes down to three simple areas and that's quality training, quality coaching and quality competition. And if we're going to get quality competition, then we've got to fight outside the Pacific. We've got to look further afield if we're going to get back to where we were and give the sport some credibility again.

"But first the systems have to be put in place and you only have to look at Australia to see that it can be done. They've had a high-performance programme for six or eight years, longer actually.

"They qualified nine fighters at the championships, PNG one and Samoa one.

"It doesn't take a lot of grey matter to see that and realise we've got a lot of work to do," he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News