“I feel as though I am back in the ring again,” said new Box­ing Board chair­man Kirt Sin­nette, mere mo­ments af­ter he re­ceived his in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment at a sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny at the of­fice of the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

He was among four oth­er mem­bers to have re­ceived their in­stru­ments, name­ly Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tor Hem­ra­jh Ram­per­sad; At­tor­ney-at-Law Bryan Bas­deo, vice chair­man Kim ‘Bone Crush­er’ Quashie, and Kwanieze John, who has earned a re-ap­point­ment to the board.

Since the elec­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as the new gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) on April 28 this year, the sport of box­ing has faced a vir­tu­al shut­down. The five-mem­ber board re­signed im­me­di­ate­ly, ren­der­ing the sport non-func­tion­al as all op­er­a­tions ceased due to the ab­sence of a board.

Sin­nette, who con­test­ed the Port-of-Spain South seat un­der the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) ban­ner in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, is a for­mer box­er who wore the red, white, and black of T&T at the 1996 Olympic Games in At­lanta, told Guardian Me­dia Sports his first or­der of busi­ness will be to meet with his board mem­bers be­fore ap­proach­ing the rel­e­vant box­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, which is be­ing led by long-serv­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor Ce­cil Forde.

He al­so as­sured that since there are changes world­wide in the sport, par­tic­u­lar­ly where or­gan­i­sa­tions are do­ing both am­a­teur and pro­fes­sion­al box­ing. “I want to re­vi­talise the sport of box­ing and re­turn it to the times when it was among the top three sports in the coun­try. I am still of the view that T&T can be the mec­ca of box­ing in the Caribbean. We have a lot of young box­ers who are in­ter­est­ed, and who can be placed in­to box­ing pro­grammes at schools, com­mu­ni­ties, and youth clubs to be nur­tured and de­vel­oped. We will have to work with this young tal­ent be­cause they are the ones who will be­come pro­fes­sion­al box­ers lat­er on.”

Min­is­ter of Sports Phillip Watts praised the Board’s di­verse ex­per­tise, reaf­firm­ing its role in up­hold­ing T&T’s rich box­ing tra­di­tion while dri­ving mod­ern­iza­tion and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for emerg­ing ath­letes and coach­es.

Voic­ing his sup­port, Min­is­ter Watts stressed, “This Board now has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to up­hold the proud his­to­ry of Box­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and to mod­ern­ize the sport to cre­ate a lega­cy of op­por­tu­ni­ties for up­com­ing ath­letes and coach­es.”

He pledged the Gov­ern­ment’s ded­i­ca­tion to en­sur­ing that box­ing con­tin­ues to in­spire dis­ci­pline, re­silience, and na­tion­al pride, es­pe­cial­ly with­in grass­roots com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

In­stalled for a two-year term, the TB­BC Board is charged with reg­u­lat­ing and pro­mot­ing box­ing un­der the Box­ing Con­trol Act, Chap­ter 21:52, Sec­tion 2(1).

The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs re­mains com­mit­ted to unit­ing stake­hold­ers and fos­ter­ing sport and youth de­vel­op­ment for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture.