Boxing: BTF Rankings Reveal Qualifiers For Africa and Asia/Oceania

Last month the Boxing Task Force announced the cancellation of the World Olympic Qualifier due to the rescheduling of the European qualifier. The quotas for that event have been restructured where the highest ranked unqualified athlete from the BTF rankings from each of the four continents (Africa, Asia/Oceania, Europe and Pan America) would be given a spot to compete. With the African and Asian/Oceania qualifiers completed the BTF have announced the qualifiers from those regions.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo led all African nations with three qualified athletes, namely Fiston Mbaya Mulumba (men’s lightweight), Marcelat Sakobi Matshu (women’s featherweight) and Naomie Yumba Therese (women’s lightweight). Qualifying two athletes were Kenya (Elly Ochola, men’s heavyweight and Elizabeth Akiniyi, women’s welterweight) and Uganda (Kavuma Ssemujju, men’s middleweight and Catherine Nanziri, women’s flyweight). Six African nations qualified a single athlete; Algeria (Ichrak Chaib, women’s middleweight), Botswana (Rajab Mahommed, men’s flyweight), Egypt (Yousry Hafez, men’s super heavyweight), Ghana (Shakul Samed, men’s light heavyweight), Mauritius (Merven Clair, men’s welterweight) and Morocco (Mohamed Hamout, men’s featherweight).

On the Asian/Oceania side, it was Uzbekistan who collected the most quotas with two men (Fanat Kakhramonov, middleweight and Dilshodbek Ruzmetov, light heavyweight) and two women (Raykhona Kodirova, lightweight and Maftunakhon Melieva, welterweight). Along with what they qualified at the continental qualifiers, Uzbekistan has qualified a full men’s team. Qualifying two athletes were Mongolia (Erdenebatyn Tsendbaatar, men’s featherweight and Myagmarjargal Munkhbat, women’s middleweight), the Philippines (Carlo Paalam, men’s lightweight and Nesthy Petrcio women’s featherweight) and Samoa (Marion Ah Tong, men’s welterweight and Ato Plodzicki-Faoagali, men’s heavyweight). The final qualifiers went to Australia (Harrison Garside, men’s lightweight), Bahrain (Danis Latypov, men’s super heavyweight) and North Korea (Pang Chol-mi, women’s flyweight).

The Pan American and European athletes will be revealed once the rankings are finalized after their respective continental qualifiers.

Update: Due to the withdrawal of North Korea from the Olympics, the quota originally awarded to the women’s flyweight has been reallocated to Thailand’s Jutamas Jitpong.