A change in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for box­ers at­tempt­ing to make it to the Olympic Games has pre­vent­ed T&T's Nigel Paul from seal­ing a place at the Olympics along with his coun­try­man Aaron Prince.

With the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic pre­vent­ing the qual­i­fiers in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, Paul who was ranked third in his di­vi­sion (Su­per Heavy­weight), was set to be among the par­tic­i­pants at the Olympic Games un­til the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) changed the se­lec­tion process.

It is un­der­stood the IOC used on­ly a few in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments to pick the Amer­i­c­as top four box­ers, name­ly the World Cham­pi­onships 2019, the Pan Amer­i­can Games 2019 and the World Cham­pi­onships of 2017. Paul who had scored a lot of points at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games for the past four years had lost all those points, among oth­er tour­na­ments.

At the end of the process, Paul moved from third to fifth in his di­vi­sion and there­fore failed to qual­i­fy. Con­tact­ed, Paul said he wouldn't say that he is dis­ap­point­ed at not qual­i­fy­ing, since, as a man of faith, he be­lieves that if it wasn't God's will for him to be at the Olympics, then he wouldn't be there.

"I did what I was sup­posed to do, I trained hard, I was dis­ci­plined but un­for­tu­nate­ly I wouldn't be able to go to the Games, but in terms of dis­ap­point­ment, I'm re­al­ly try­ing to keep my mind steady. My fo­cus ba­si­cal­ly just switched to the next. The last Olympics was my first ma­jor event. I've nev­er been to a World Cham­pi­onships be­fore, Com­mon­wealth Games, Pan Am, noth­ing, so see­ing that I wouldn't be able to go to this Olympics, the next thing on the card for me is the World Cham­pi­onships and that's in Oc­to­ber in Rus­sia. I re­al­ly want­ed to make it to the Olympics, but since I can't, I'll have to make it to the podi­um at a World Cham­pi­onships and that's my fo­cus right now," Paul said.

Paul in 2016, took just 10 fights to se­cure a place at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where he was knocked out in the pre­lim­i­nary round by Niger­ian Efe Ajag­ba. But he con­tin­ued to grow in the sport, telling Guardian Me­dia Sports that he was hop­ing that this Olympics would have been his last, as he has been se­ri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ing whether to go pro or re­main as an am­a­teur fight­er.

The bulky fight­er turns 32 on Mon­day and said he just might con­sid­er the next Olympic Games in France in four years time.

With Paul now out of­fi­cial­ly, it means the coun­try would on­ly be rep­re­sent­ed by one fight­er- Aaron Prince, who con­test the mid­dleweight cat­e­go­ry.

Prince qual­i­fied as the fourth-ranked box­er in his di­vi­sion in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as. Paul said he was ex­treme­ly elat­ed when he heard that Prince had qual­i­fied for the Olympics, and not­ed the de­ter­mined Prince might even cre­ate his­to­ry by win­ning a match or two.