Four T&T box­ers—Tian­na Guy, Ab­dul Tay­lor, Don­nel Phillip and An­gel Eyed George—have earned qual­i­fy­ing berths for the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games to be held in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in Au­gust.

The quar­tet lost their re­spec­tive bouts but still se­cured spots at the Ju­ly 24 to Au­gust 8 Games in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic due to the num­ber of box­ers in their di­vi­sions. Coach Reynold Cox said it is the first time out for his charges since the 2024 Olympic cy­cle, but they will have some work to do. “Our mis­sion is qual­i­fi­ca­tion, so now we have to put in the work to make the podi­um at the CAC Games.”

Guy, a sil­ver medal­list at the Fe­liks Stamm In­ter­na­tion­al Box­ing Tour­na­ment in Poland in 2024, when she de­feat­ed Hass Wik­to­ria 3-2, went down by the same mar­gin of de­feat to Ley­la Bor­isha Bra­vo Per­al­ta of Nicaragua in a 60 kg con­test at the CAC Qual­i­fiers in Guadala­jara, Mex­i­co, from March 12 to 16.

Phillip, mean­while, a gold medal­list at the Caribbean Box­ing Cham­pi­onships in Beause­jour, St Lu­cia, last year, had the most chal­leng­ing con­test of the qual­i­fiers, go­ing up against Olympic cham­pi­on Eris­landy Al­varez of Cu­ba. But the T&T box­er, con­sid­ered one of the promis­ing tal­ents in the coun­try, flat­tered to de­ceive, as Brazil­ian ref­er­ee Michelle Paulo had to in­ter­vene to stop the 65 kg con­test in the sec­ond round of the three-round bout.

Mean­while, the pair of An­gel George and Ab­dul Tay­lor con­ced­ed de­feats in con­trast­ing fash­ions. George, who suf­fered a de­feat in her women’s light heavy­weight di­vi­sion con­test to Pana­ma’s Athey­na By­lon at the 2023 Pan Amer­i­can Games, gave a cred­i­ble per­for­mance be­fore go­ing down on points to Maryelis Yriza of Venezuela, while Tay­lor was knocked out by Yil­mar Gon­za­lez of Colom­bia in the first round of the men’s 60 kg fight.

The quar­tet left Mex­i­co on Mon­day and was sched­uled to be back home yes­ter­day. Pres­i­dent of the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Ce­cil Forde said the quar­tet was cho­sen due to the small num­ber of fight­ers in their re­spec­tive di­vi­sions.

“We are not sat­is­fied with the re­sult, but we are con­fi­dent that we will do bet­ter at the CAC Games. While I don’t want to sound like I’m mak­ing ex­cus­es, there was no com­pe­ti­tion for the fight­ers due to the non-ap­point­ment of a box­ing board, which pre­vent­ed the fight­ers from prepar­ing for the qual­i­fiers. They were not up to scratch for the qual­i­fiers,” Forde told the me­dia on Tues­day.

“There were al­so no funds avail­able, as the UNC gov­ern­ment took time to sort it­self out af­ter it came in­to gov­ern­ment. This meant we went to the qual­i­fiers to just qual­i­fy, as not much could have been done with re­spect to prepa­ra­tion. How­ev­er, now that things have been sort­ed out and the TT­BA has been work­ing close­ly with the new­ly ap­point­ed board, which is chaired by Kirt Sin­nette, we ex­pect to put our heads down and work. So we’re ex­pect­ing not on­ly bet­ter per­for­mances at the games but pos­si­bly medals and ti­tles,” Forde ex­plained.