More than 50 novices and fresh faces have reg­is­tered for the Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Box­ing Cham­pi­onship, which got off to a start last evening at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol (TTB­BC) Boxu Potts, the in­crease in the num­ber of young­sters who now prac­tise box­ing has been at­trib­uted to the joint ef­forts of the Min­istry of Sport, the T&T Am­a­teur Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) and the TTB­BC. He said all par­ties have been work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion to en­sure that box­ing hope­fuls were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ties nec­es­sary to grow and hone their skills and the re­sult­ing suc­cess was now vis­i­ble in the in­crease in par­tic­i­pants at the na­tion­al cham­pi­onships.

"We have a whole new gen­er­a­tion of am­a­teur box­ers to move for­ward with. There are many youths in the nurs­eries, and our goal to qual­i­fy for the 2016 Olympics is very much at­tain­able. Some of the old­er ones have reached their ca­pac­i­ty and are stag­nat­ed. We can't wait un­til 2015 to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial Olympians," said Potts.

He in­di­cat­ed that care­ful at­ten­tion was be­ing paid to this cham­pi­onship, as box­ers will be se­lect­ed for spe­cialised train­ing to­wards Rio 2016.

Ac­tion will con­tin­ue at the same venue tonight and to­mor­row from 6 pm, while ac­tion on the week­end starts at 3 pm.

The event has been sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Sport and spon­sored by the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T. Caribbean Bot­tlers Ltd has shown in­ter­est in the de­vel­op­ment of the young ath­letes and has sup­port­ed the event with bot­tled wa­ter and Pow­er­ade.

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