T&T’s lead­ing box­er, su­per heavy­weight fight­er Nigel Paul, along with mid­dleweight Aaron Prince and heavy­weight An­gel George, will leave on Oc­to­ber 16 to at­tend a spe­cial train­ing camp in Chile as they step up prepa­ra­tions for the Pan Amer­i­can Games which will be staged in that coun­try from Oc­to­ber 20 - No­vem­ber 5.

This trio of pugilists will join Tian­na Guy and Or­te­ga Jokhu who have al­ready left the coun­try to put in ex­tra work be­fore the Games and are cur­rent­ly in Colom­bia at­tend­ing an­oth­er train­ing camp as the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion con­tin­ues to do all in its pow­er to not on­ly bring home Pan Am medals, but eye the big­ger prize of get­ting the box­ers qual­i­fied for next year’s Olympic Games in Paris, France.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports, coach Reynold Cox ad­mit­ted that while the goal is a least a gold, ac­com­plish­ing this is by no means an easy task, but gave as­sur­ances all will be done to get T&T on the podi­um and to sur­pass the lone bronze-medal achieved by the T&T team back in 2013.

Un­der the strict guid­ance of the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, the box­ers have been con­stant­ly un­der­go­ing prepa­ra­tion work of one type or an­oth­er. At the Pan Am Games, the top two fight­ers will earn au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Olympic Games in Paris, France next year.

Ac­cord­ing to Cox, the men­tal side of the sport and cap­i­tal­is­ing on the tech­ni­cal ar­eas the judges are look­ing for, is all that’s need­ed for the T&T fight­ers to make the step, say­ing that the box­ers are of­ten com­pet­i­tive and right there in al­most every bout and what is need­ed is for his charges to con­vert close chal­lenges in­to vic­to­ries.

He said, "We can­not af­ford to give away easy wins. We have been guilty of this in the past, but at this tour­na­ment, we have to get the com­pet­i­tive edge, so we are work­ing hard on not giv­ing away fights that we should win and ul­ti­mate­ly to qual­i­fy for the Olympics."

Guy is one of the box­ers en­ter­ing with Games with high hopes af­ter show­ing great signs of progress when at­tend­ing an­oth­er train­ing camp in Poland ear­li­er this year. There, the tough fe­male punch­er had a num­ber of spar­ring ses­sions against Pol­ish box­ers and end­ed the stint with a nar­row but en­cour­ag­ing points loss to a very high­ly re­gard­ed Eng­lish box­er – in fact the sil­ver medal­list at the last Com­mon­wealth Games.

Ex­pec­ta­tions will al­so be high for Paul, the Olympic box­er who was tak­en un­der the wings of coach Floyd Trum­pet and has been putting in a lot of work, while George has al­so been prepar­ing in all phas­es un­der the watch­ful eyes of Rawl­son Dop­well.

The five fight­ers, who booked their tick­ets for the Pan Am Games at qual­i­fiers held in Colom­bia back in Au­gust, will touch down on Chilean soil three days pri­or to the start of the tour­na­ment.

To date, T&T has se­cured just a sin­gle medal at Pan Am lev­el, when Michael Alexan­der, claimed bronze back in 2013. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, what was then a promis­ing ca­reer was de­railed af­ter a mo­tor cy­cle ac­ci­dent in 2021 left him in in­ten­sive care for two weeks nurs­ing bro­ken ribs, punc­tured lungs, along with bro­ken bones in his left hand and shoul­der.

At the Pan Am, the T&T box­ers will be up against box­ers from the Unit­ed States, Colom­bia, Ar­genti­na, Mex­i­co, Brazil, Cana­da, and Uruguay among oth­er coun­tries.