All national boxers will be subjected to a mandatory COVID-19 test before they can resume training ahead of the next year's busy year in sports, president of the T&T Boxing Association Cecil Forde has said.
The boxers were part of a national programme in preparation for next year's Commonwealth Youth Games and Youth Continental Championships, which are both scheduled to be held here in T&T in July and May tentatively, as well as the Olympic Qualifiers which are set for April but may be moved from Argentina to another country due to the high cases of COVID-19 deaths there.
Forde, who lamented the poor state of the sport in recent times, admitted that his national boxers have never stopped training, noting that they continued virtual training for the past few months, however, the programme is set to transition to the Stadium for contact session, following the permission given by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley for national teams to resume preparation, three weeks ago.
Forde told Guardian Media Sports he wanted to ensure that all was safe while heading back into the programme. He insisted though the testing was only for national boxers and no one else.
"We are now trying to put things in place for the testing to be done. We are talking to people. We are also talking with the Sport Company of T&T (SporTT) to sort out the use of the Stadium, so I say by next week, we should be back in full force," Forde explained.
Meanwhile, Reynold Cox, who is one of two national coaches, said they are basically transitioning from the virtual sessions to the gyms and the savannahs, etc. He explained that while some boxers have not attended the virtual sessions regularly, he was still satisfied with the preparation, saying their challenge to now is getting back to regular training.
The programme is being run by national coaches Cox and Ralston Dopwell and some of the boxers include Olympian Nigel Paul, who will contest the super heavyweight category, as well as Tianna Guy (57kg), Aaron Prince, Andrew Fermin, Michael Alexander (64kg), Donald Phillips (57kg), Anthony Joseph (52kg), Tyrone Thomas (69kg) and Jewel Lambert (51kg) who is currently based in the United States.