For­mer Com­mon­wealth sil­ver medal­ist Tariq Ab­dul-Haqq, ad­mit­ted that he made him­self un­avail­able for se­lec­tion for the up­com­ing Olympic qual­i­fiers, but in­sists that spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol (TTB­BC)- Boxu Potts was cov­er­ing up the re­al rea­son, for his ex­clu­sion. "I just made my­self un­avail­able," said Ab­dul-Haqq. He was re­spond­ing to com­ments made by Potts that a hand in­jury and up­com­ing ex­ams were the rea­son for Ab­dul-Haqq's omis­sion from the nine-mem­ber T&T team which will trav­el to Brazil next month. "He's (Potts) cov­er­ing up the main rea­sons for why I won't rep­re­sent the coun­try. My hand is fine, and maybe he's part­ly cor­rect about ex­ams, but I could've pushed that for an­oth­er year if I want­ed to rep­re­sent Trinidad."

Son of for­mer deputy-chair­man of the T&TB­BC Yaqub Ab­dul-Haqq, Tariq said that he has bro­ken both his nose and in­jured his hand rep­re­sent­ing T&T, on­ly to be promised com­pen­sa­tion by "a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial.", which nev­er ma­te­ri­aslised. "It was my fa­ther who paid the ex­pens­es when I got in­jured rep­re­sent­ing my own coun­try. We were nev­er re­im­bursed. It's as if Potts is suit­ing his own in­ter­est. "No one from the TTB­BC has called me to ask how things are go­ing. I feel as if box­ing in Trinidad makes no sense and no one re­al­ly cares. "I re­mem­ber Ash­win Creed (per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport) telling me in 2010: don't wor­ry, do what you have to do and we will cov­er every­thing, in­juries and all." He said he holds med­ical re­ceipts to­talling $25,000 as proof.

Ab­dul-Haqq, who was al­so promised Elite-Ath­letes' Fund­ing to the tune of $250,000, said he was giv­en on­ly one cheque for $150,000. He then ques­tioned why cer­tain oth­er ath­letes who con­sis­tent­ly non-per­form are giv­en Elite Ath­letes' Fund­ing. "I can ac­count for for all monies re­ceived by the Min­istry. They were used for sup­ple­ments, equip­ment, and oth­er things which were need­ed, and then I stopped re­ceiv­ing fund­ing. It's not like they can say, 'well, he's wast­ing the mon­ey, so its no sense giv­ing him again.'" Ab­dul-Haqq went on to say that every time he goes in the box­ing ring, he does it for T&T, but at the end, does not feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed or recog­nised. Ab­dul-Haqq, a for­mer stu­dent of St Mary's Col­lege, was re­gard­ed as one of the bright­est young tal­ents to come out of the Caribbean. His most no­table achieve­ment came in the Com­mon­wealth Games in 2010, when he won a sil­ver medal, los­ing on­ly to In­dia's Paramjeet Samo­ta in the su­per heavy­weight plus 91kg bout for gold.