Boxing Boxing opposes one-size-fits-all approach

The Botswana Boxing Association (BoBA) has called for the review of the incentive pledge that has been made by Choppies towards the Olympics team. The local grocer has promised P1 million to athletes winning a gold medal, P500,000 for the silver medal and P250,000 for bronze.

There is P25,000 that will be offered to any team member who reaches the finals in the respective events.

Relay teams will receive similar amounts, which will be shared equally among the team members.

BoBA vice president, Gilbert Khunwane said while the incentives are welcome, the challenge is the one-size-fits-all approach. “They were not looking at the kind of sport one is in.

A medal is a medal, gold is gold but the arrangement put other codes like boxing at a disadvantage. At boxing, for you to get a medal at Olympics, you should have had a minimum of five fights and that is a lot,” he said.

Khunwane said he hopes that next time when it comes to incentives, consultations with National Sport Associations (NSA) will be done. Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) acting chief executive officer (CEO), Wedu Motswetla said it was Choppies that came up with the proposal.

“Choppies approached us with a proposal that they would like to incentivise the team for the Olympics. We advised them that next time it would be best if they come on board when we are preparing the team. That way we would be able to qualify more athletes,” she said. Motswetla said in future, they will approach Choppies in order to come up with a better arrangement for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

“Mind you, we are representing the entire team, hence we could not reject the proposal. If it was a single athlete, we could have called that athlete to discuss the proposal.

You cannot afford to be selective when offered something. Our target is two medals and if we achieve that without an incentive in place, then it was going to be a challenge,” she said.

Motswetla said the proposal was not done with athletics in mind. She said she was not dismissing chances of boxing winning a medal.

She said the code long qualified but their plans were disrupted by the outbreak of COVID-19. “Olympics are unpredictable, at first we had planned to issue a wild card entry to weightlifter, Magdelene Moyengwa but she got a straight qualification.

Swimmer, James Freeman was expected to get a straight qualification through the FINA championships but failed. He has received a wild card. Cyclist Bakang Ebudilwe and Karabo Kula from Taekwando were in line for a wild card but did not get through,” she said.