Nicholas Clarke

Spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol Boxu Potts says Com­mon­wealth bronze medal­list Michael Alexan­der will need to at­tend for­eign train­ing camps if he is to win gold medals at in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. Speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day, the for­mer pro­mot­er said that Alexan­der, 21, had to fol­low in the foot­steps of track stars Hase­ly Craw­ford and Ato Boldon, both of whom ben­e­fit­ted from for­eign train­ing, in or­der to be­come a world class box­er.

"For a long time now box­ers from T&T have been re­turn­ing with sil­ver and bronze medals from in­ter­na­tion­al events," he said. "We need to get some gold medals and in or­der to get gold medals we must now de­vel­op a new cut­ting edge men­tal­i­ty. Ath­letes like Craw­ford and Boldon in the past have spent time train­ing in for­eign coun­tries and I think Michael should be no dif­fer­ent."

He added that the coun­try's coach­es could al­so de­vel­op their craft by spend­ing time abroad.

"Some of our coach­es can go and learn the sci­ence of box­ing and then im­part knowl­edge to our lo­cal ath­letes."

Potts said that such ini­tia­tives would be dif­fi­cult as fund­ing from the Min­istry of Sports had dried up in re­cent times. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed op­ti­mism at the ap­point­ment of Dr. Ru­pert Grif­fith as the new Min­is­ter of Sport fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Anil Roberts.

"I trust that Dr. Grif­fith, who has come in with­out bag­gage, will be good for the Min­istry and will deal with sports in a fair man­ner and get the per­son­al­i­ty out the way," he said. "He is a for­mer sports­man him­self and a man of ac­tion. He hits the ground run­ning and likes to make things hap­pen. I think he will do an ex­cel­lent job."

With­out fund­ing from the Min­istry, Alexan­der re­lied on con­tri­bu­tions from lo­cal com­pa­nies Cap­i­tal City and Caribbean Fa­cil­i­ties Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (CF­CL) Con­struc­tion for his prepa­ra­tions for the Com­mon­wealth Games.

Potts be­lieves that if the Min­istry had pro­vid­ed ad­e­quate sup­port for the sport, as many as sev­en fight­ers could have rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Games.