As the Paris Olympics boxing tournament gets underway on Saturday, July 27, some boxers have yet to recover from the pain and shock of missing out from this multi-sport extravaganza.
One of them is Nigeria’s African Games light-middleweight champion Blessing Oraekwe (pictured) who was beaten on points 5-0 by Armenia’s Ani Hovsepyan in the first round of their welterweight bout.
“The night I lost I wasn’t able to sleep, I cried till the next morning,” Oraekwe told me in a telephone interview from Lagos.
“It affected me mentally, I even thought of quitting boxing for some time but our head coach Tony (Konyegwachie) coach Adura (Olalehin) my partner and few of my colleagues encouraged me, telling me losing is not the end of the world.
“It was so painful losing in Thailand because I gave out my all in training reducing weight to welter but all thanks to God for making me go through the three rounds safe and sound, I will be back in 2028 for the next Olympics.”
Oraekwe said the most difficult part of her participation in the Thailand qualifiers was cutting down weight from light-middleweight to welterweight.
“I had to shade off 7kg to fit in welter, I wanted to move up to middleweight because I knew I will be more comfortable with more strength and power but my friend Patricia Mbata was there, and I wouldn’t have liked any confrontation with her.
“I would say the hardest part in boxing is reducing weight, I wouldn’t like to go through such an experience again, In Thailand I was surviving mostly on fruits and very light food.
“It was hard for me to sleep while cutting calories it was just like I was feeling a pain inside of me but I can’t explain how the pains is.”
The southpaw Oraekwe is among a number of boxers who went through this pain brought by the International Olympic Committee’s decision to reduce the number of weight classes to six for female boxers and seven for men.
Boxers have gone through a painful process of cutting down weight and others did not even take part in the qualifiers because their weight classes were removed by the IOC.
“Does the IOC know how they’ve tortured some of us with their decision to reduce divisions, totally unnecessary, a boxer can easily die losing weight,” said one of the boxers who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of victimization.
Oraekwe, who’ll celebrate her 26th birthday on August 12, burst into the international limelight during this year’s African Games in Accra, Ghana. She confounded sceptics by causing a major upset in the finals, outpointing two-time Africa champion and world silver medallist Alcinda Dos Santos of Mozambique to become the new African Games light-middleweight champion.
She has resumed training looking ahead to participate in the Africa Elite Championships in Kinshasa, DRC, in October this year.
✍🏼 *_AFBC Communications_*
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