Boxers’ Training For Asian Qualifying Round Begins Today |
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10-Jan-2012
THE NEWS
THE NEWS CORRESPONDENT
KARACHI: National boxers will start their preparatory campaign for the Asian Qualifying round for Olympics at the Pakistan Sports Complex in Islamabad on Tuesday (today).
“Yes, the camp will start from Tuesday. Two boxers Zulqarnain and Ghulam Mustafa reported for the camp today while the rest will join them tomorrow,” Pakistan Boxing Federation (PBF) secretary Mohammad Akram Khan told The News from Islamabad on Monday.
As many as 13 boxers have been invited for the camp which will be supervised by coaches Arshad Hussain, Zaigham Maseel and Abdul Majeed Brohi. Akram said that after a two-week training, effort would be made to pick five to six pugilists for the qualifiers to be held in March in Astana (Kazakhstan).
“We also plan to send the selected lot to Kazakhstan at the end of this month to train them at the Astana academy till the qualifiers,” he said. He said that England-born Haroon Khan, who failed to impress in the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto International Boxing tournament in December last year, is also included in the list of probable boxers. “But if Waseem, the gold medalist of the Islamabad event, wants to play in the 52kg then Haroon will have to appear in the qualifiers in the 49kg. But we have also Mohammad Nisar in the 49kg and it will be seen who proves himself fit for the Astana event in this category,” Akram added.
Pakistan fielded three boxers in the World Championship, also qualifying round for Olympics, in Baku in September-October last year but they failed to click. The Asian Qualifying round in Astana is the last chance for the national boxers to earn a ticket to London. Otherwise, it would be the second consecutive time that Pakistan will miss Olympic berth in boxing. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, too, no Pakistani boxer participated.
Unofficial list of probable boxers: Niamatullah, Zulqarnain, Atif Maqbool, Ghulam Mustafa, Mohammad Waseem, Haroon Khan, Nadir Baloch, Mohammad Nisar, Qadir Khan, Mohammad Hussain, Asif Raza, Haider Riaz. |
