T&T's first fe­male world box­ing cham­pi­on, Ria Ram­nar­ine, re­cent­ly re­turned from a World Box­ing Coun­cil (WBC) con­ven­tion in Mex­i­co where she was in­spired by a num­ber of box­ing greats, in­clud­ing the leg­endary Muham­mad Ali. "There was no chance of speak­ing with him but his mere pres­ence was an in­spi­ra­tion," Ram­nar­ine said.

Sev­er­al oth­er world cham­pi­ons, many of whom climbed the am­a­teur ranks, were al­so present.

Ram­nar­ine said: "I had the plea­sure and priv­i­lege to in­ter­act with some of the best box­ers in the world and I worked along­side some of them when we vis­it­ed the As­so­ci­a­tion of Par­ents with Men­tal­ly Hand­i­capped Chil­dren. Cham­pi­ons like Miguel Cot­to, Ter­ry Nor­ris, Christy Mar­tin, Mia St John and Ali­cia Ash­ley were present and the ex­am­ple set by these in­di­vid­u­als both as ath­letes and hu­man­i­tar­i­ans was very hum­bling. The learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the "busi­ness" of box­ing was al­so cru­cial and it is some­thing that I have ben­e­fit­ed from great­ly."

Ram­nar­ine is a found­ing mem­ber of The Cross­roads Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TCO), a young non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion whose mis­sion is "to make a pos­i­tive im­pact on the lives of those in need through di­rect aid or by act­ing as a con­duit to oth­er lo­cal, re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions which may be bet­ter able to as­sist."

Their first of­fi­cial project in­volved rais­ing funds to pro­cure equip­ment for a neona­tal re­sus­ci­ta­tion provider course at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. "A doc­tor at the POS­GH, who is a neona­tal con­sul­tant, has vol­un­teered to train the staff in this par­tic­u­lar re­sus­ci­ta­tion course," ex­plained Ram­nar­ine. "Af­ter this course was in­tro­duced at Mt. Hope Hos­pi­tal in 2004, the peri­na­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate was re­duced by 25 per cent. The long-term ef­fects of in­ad­e­quate re­sus­ci­ta­tion, such as cere­bral pal­sy and oth­er se­ri­ous im­pair­ments, al­so de­creased. We want­ed to start where it mat­ters the most, and where bet­ter than in the cra­dle?"

With the Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Box­ing Cham­pi­onships start­ing tonight, Ram­nar­ine is as­sist­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion. Vis­it­ing the gyms and gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion, she has high­light­ed sev­er­al box­ers. Ram­nar­ine, a four-time world cham­pi­on who cur­rent­ly holds two world ti­tles, in­di­cat­ed that she was more than hap­py to work along­side the am­a­teur box­ers and the ad­min­is­tra­tors.

"This op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vides me with the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to give back to box­ing in T&T and to build my ex­pe­ri­ence at both the ad­min­is­tra­tive and com­mu­ni­ty lev­el. I have al­ways main­tained that sport is one's tick­et to the world. It brings com­mu­ni­ties, coun­tries and the world to­geth­er like noth­ing else can. T&T has an abun­dance of tal­ent. The youth, young men and women need the av­enues to har­ness and hone these tal­ents."

The young women and girls in the sport are of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to Ram­nar­ine. "Our na­tion has so many women who are more than ca­pa­ble of achiev­ing their dreams."Our fe­males are stronger and bet­ter skilled than they know or be­lieve. I would love to see our girls at the 2016 Olympics, on the medal podi­um. How­ev­er, they must be prop­er­ly guid­ed in every as­pect of life, they must have all-round sup­port and de­vel­op­ment."

A lev­el one coach in box­ing, Ram­nar­ine is still very much ac­tive in train­ing and said she will ac­cept the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete at any time. Based at Fine Line Fight Fac­to­ry in Ch­agua­nas, she trains five times a week. "Train­ing is a giv­en. With or with­out any bouts in sight, I al­ways pre­fer to main­tain a cer­tain lev­el of fit­ness and to con­tin­ue in­creas­ing my knowl­edge. Be­ing in the gym con­sis­tent­ly al­so gives me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sist our am­a­teur box­ers."

Her coach, Bhar­rath Ra­moutar, said that Ram­nar­ine had no def­i­nite up­com­ing bouts so he was quite hap­py that she is in­volved in the na­tion­al cham­pi­onships."Ria has re­cent­ly com­plet­ed a ba­sic course in sport ad­min­is­tra­tion and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion and has a gen­uine de­sire to make a dif­fer­ence to the na­tion's youth, so I am sure she will be an as­set to T&T and box­ing, both in and out of the ring."