Africa featherweight champion Marcelat Sakobi and Mandela African Boxing Cup welterweight gold medallist Brigitte Mbabi have landed safely in Paris, and vowed to win DR Congo’s first ever Olympic medal.
DR Congo made their debut in the Olympic Games in 1968 in Mexico with the boxers entering the fray in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Since their first appearance in 1968, DRC have yet to win a medal in the Olympics. The boxers and their coach Baoba Ilunga have said enough is enough to this dry spell. They now want to win the first ever Olympic medal in all disciplines for DRC.
“Even if it’s bronze we have to return home with a medal, we’re ready to do our country proud,” Sakobi, two-time African champion, told me on phone from her hotel room on arrival in the French capital.
“We are going to fight hard, we don’t care who we meet because we have done enough training in Kinshasa,” said Lubumbashi-based Mbabi who stopped Cape Verde’s Africa welterweight champion Ivanusa Moreira in the second round of their welterweight quarter-final bout to earn a place in the Olympics during the second world qualifiers in Thailand.
Sakobi booked her Paris ticket in the African qualifiers in Dakar, losing in the final to Tunisia’s Khouloud Hlimi.
Coach Baoba Ilunga echoed the two boxers’ sentiments on ending their 56-year drought in the Games.
“We have met with the boxers here in Paris and our Technical Director (Lofanga Lopoli Toussaint) and said we have to win a medal for our country,” Ilunga told *_AFBC Communications_ .*
“We can’t continue like this, for how long without winning an Olympic medal?.”
Despite doing badly in the Olympic Games, DRC have made their presence felt in Africa.
At last year’s Africa Elite Boxing Championships in Yaounde, Cameroon, DRC placed second to Morocco with 15 medals, five gold, six silver and four bronze medals. They won the highest number of medals in the tournament.
DR Congo maintained their sparkling performance, finishing fourth in the African Games in Accra this year with two gold, five silver and four bronze medals.
Inspired by their results in Accra, DRC went on to win the inaugural Mandela Africa Boxing Cup tournament in Durban, South Africa with ten gold medals, three silver and six bronzes.
ÑmThe Central African country made its debut in the Olympic Games boxing tournament in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Six boxers represented DRC in LA. They were light-flyweight Lutuma Diabateza, bantamweight Tshoza Mkuta, lightweight Andre Kimbu Mboma, light-welterweight Muenge Kafuanka, welterweight Kitenge Kitengewa and light-middleweight Fubulume Inyama.
DRC boxers made their second appearance in the Olympic Games in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. The boxers in Seoul were bantamweight Ibibongo Nduta, light-welterweight Kampompo Mlango, y6light-middleweight Wabanko Banko, middleweight Serge Kabongo, light-heavyweight Rand Kanika and super-heavyweight Tshibalabala Kadima.
In their third Olympic Games participation in 1992 in Barcelona, DRC was represented by only one boxer, middleweight Mohamed Siluvangi. Again in their fourth and fifth Olympic Games participation in 2008 in Beijing, China and 2012 in London, DRC entered only one boxer, middleweight Herry Saliku Biembe and super-heavyweight Meji Mwamba in London.
DRC’s sixth participation in the Olympic Games boxing tournament was at the Tokyo 2020 Games with four boxers – two men and two women – qualifying for the Tokyo Games.
The women boxers in Tokyo were featherweight Marcelat Sakobi and lightweight Naomie Yumba. The men were lightweight Mbaya Mulumba and middleweight David Tshama.
Mulumba lost 5-0 his round of 32 bout to Japan’s Daisuke Narimatsu while Tshama saw off Cameroon’s 2018 Commonwealth Games silver medallist Wilfried Ntsengue in the round of 32 and lost 4-1 to American-born Haitian Darelle Valsaint in the pre-quarters.
Sakobi lost her first fight in the round of 32 to Nesthy “Nesh” Petecio of the Philippines who went on to win a silver medal to add on to her gold at the 2019 Worlds and silver in 2014..
Yumba, a bronze medallist in the 2019 African Games, got a bye in the round 32. She then lost on points in the pre-quarters to Uzbekistan’s bronze medallist in the 2021 World Military Boxing Championships, Raykhona Kodiroka.
Credit: AFBC Communications
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