De­spite win­ning just one medal, a bronze, by de­fault, the T&T Am­a­teur Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) has laud­ed the ef­forts of its four-mem­ber fe­male team which took part at the Con­ti­nen­tal Fe­male Cham­pi­onships in Venezuela ear­li­er this week.

In a press re­lease, pres­i­dent of TTA­BA Ce­cil Forde blamed a lack of prepa­ra­tion, as well as a lack of sup­port from the pub­lic, cor­po­rate T&T and the Gov­ern­ment for the team en­ter­ing in­to the cham­pi­onship at a dis­ad­van­tage. All four fight­ers lost their open­ing fights and wit­nessed an ear­ly elim­i­na­tion.

"One must re­mem­ber that our girls had on­ly six weeks of live-in camp, and the one com­pe­ti­tion was stopped when cer­tain peo­ple with po­lit­i­cal agen­das shut­down a box off be­tween the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Bar­ba­dos. This de­mor­alised our ath­letes," Forde said in the re­lease.

Chimere Tay­lor was the on­ly play­er to win a medal, and did so by way of a draw in a pool of four ath­letes.

Forde in­sist­ed the team was young and all games were used as part of the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in prepa­ra­tion for up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments, such as the Pan Amer­i­can Games, World Games, CAC Games, Com­mon­wealth Games and the Olympic Games.

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