The trio of Don­nell Phillips, Jaden Castel­lano and Nigel Paul claimed three gold medals for T&T on the fi­nal day of the Caribbean Box­ing Cham­pi­onships at the Beause­jour Sports Cen­tre in St Lu­cia on Sun­day.

Their medals were added to the two gold medals won the day be­fore by Makeieve Bellille and Je­re­mi­ah Thomas for a to­tal of five gold medals, five sil­ver, and three bronze medals, to earn the con­tin­gent in red, white, and black the over­all sec­ond-place po­si­tion be­hind Guyana.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Ce­cil Forde said he was gen­er­al­ly pleased with the over­all per­for­mance and medals won by the team.

“From here on­wards we will fo­cus on de­vel­op­ment for the fu­ture and strength­en the area we are weak in,” Forde ex­plained.

Paul, a qual­i­fi­er for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, made light work of Guade­loupe’s Ma­lik Bi­net in the su­per heavy­weight fi­nal con­test, win­ning 5-0 on points.

Paul, on­ly a lit­tle while ago, re­turned from in­juries that plagued him for the past months.

Castel­lano lat­er pre­vailed over Travis In­ver­ary of Guyana for the elite 71 kg ti­tle.

The first round had hard­ly end­ed when the ref­er­ee was called up­on to stop the con­test af­ter In­ver­ary was floored in the con­test.

Don­nell Phillip se­cured the coun­try’s third gold medal on the night by beat­ing Joel Williamson on points for the 63.5 kg ti­tle. Mean­while, the quar­tet of Luke Teas­dale, An­gel George, An­tho­ny Joseph, and Aaron Prince had to set­tle for sil­ver medals.

Teas­dale, who had an im­pres­sive per­for­mance on the open­ing night of the cham­pi­onships, went down to Leon Lou­dat of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da by split de­ci­sion in the 75 kg fight.

Lat­er, George was hum­bled by Abi­o­la Jack­man of Guyana in the 80+kg con­test, and An­tho­ny Joseph, who gar­nered much-need­ed ex­pe­ri­ence at the In­ter­na­tion­al Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Men’s World Box­ing Cham­pi­onships in Uzbek­istan in 2023, could not use it to his ad­van­tage as he was beat­en by Keevin Al­lic­ock of Guyana on points.

Al­so, Aaron Prince, the coun­try’s 2020 Tokyo, Japan Olympic qual­i­fi­er, was a shad­ow of him­self against Desmond Am­s­ter­dam of Guyana. The Guyanese out­punched his op­po­nent in the elite 75 kg ti­tle fight to con­fine T&T to yet an­oth­er de­feat on the night.

Ac­cord­ing to Forde, af­ter the cham­pi­onships, his charges will now turn their at­ten­tion to the Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onships, which will be for elite fight­ers on­ly in Ju­ly in Pana­ma.

This event will be staged by World Box­ing, the new or­gan­i­sa­tion giv­en the right to over­see am­a­teur box­ing across the globe.

The am­a­teur box­ing boss said they are now in the process of reg­is­ter­ing with World Box­ing to con­test the cham­pi­onships.