 We started with what was actually happening in Maputo, Mozambique just coming to the end last week where we had 8 boxes from Kenya representing Kenya in the African Championship, a late boxing. It was a good performance from the Kenyan boys, Bagging, Silver and Bronze. We did a commendable tournament at the Africa Boxing Championship which was being held in Maputo, Mozambique. We had a big team of 25 boxers but unfortunately we didn't have resources to take all of them for the African Championship. So we only managed to get assistance from the National Olympic of Kenya where they came in and helped us, facilitated us actually to go and participate in the tournament. We took 8 boxers, 5 boys and 3 girls. Out of the 8 we were able to bag 4 medals which I think it's a very good performance by our boxers considering that most of the top African boxing nations were there. And actually we had 3 finalists because we got 3 Silver medals. It's unfortunate we didn't manage to win a gold medal but if you do an in-depth analysis of the performance of the team you'll see there's a good improvement. And also I can say some of our boxers are still performing at an older age considering somebody like Niko Koth who was defending his title. Managed to get up to the final and won a silver medal and he last won that gold medal in 2017 at the Africa Championship in Congo Brazzaville. And this time round he still managed to get to the finals and he won a silver medal losing to Azambian on points and it has split point 3-2. So it was a very close fight. Again even if you look for the boxers who lost in the preliminary rounds. For instance David Caranja lost to a South African and that South African went on to win a bronze medal. Shafi Bakari lost to Botswana, Botswana and Boxer and the fellow went and won a silver medal. Christine Ongare lost to Azambian, the Azambian won a gold medal. So even the boxers we lost again is quality boxers who went on to perform very well in the tournament. So I would say the future is bright for us and our boxers are doing quite well and the tournament was also being used as qualifier for world championship. So at least for the four we will have qualified automatically but unfortunately I am aware that our captain Commander Niko Koth might not make that tournament. That is what I was coming up to because now we understand that Commander Niko is actually coming to I think the twilight years of his career at 37-39. 39 now. 39 now and he's actually been the captain for Team Kenya now and he's coming to the end of his captaincy. So just give us a brief overview of the career of Nick because he has had a very good career from being actually in the Kenya defense forces and also representing Kenya in Olympics in Africa when it comes to boxing. Ya he has a very long illustrious career. I remember when he was starting. I actually competed against him. So we sharpened him. I defeated him in one of our earlier bouts when he was still very young. He was an up-coming but very promising. We had a competitive bout and he went on to down the national colors for I think more than 15 years. He has competed in two Olympic Games Beijing 2008 and 2020. It's not easy considering there were two Olympics 2012 and 2016 he didn't qualify but he still managed to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Games. I think he has done four Commonwealth Games and won a bronze medal from 2010 in India daily and I think from that championship he got a baby and named the daughter daily. So I think generally I'll say Nick Kukot has been a very good sports person in general and a wonderful captain for the team. He always inspires the team whenever he will go for these international assignments. He wants to be the first one to start the tournament. Somehow he believes that he starts with good luck when he gets into the ring, fights very well, wins. He believes that sets the pace for the rest of the team and I think it's very important when you have somebody who inspires you because even the younger boxers in the team look up to him and so I think he was an inspiration person. As a federation we are very proud of him. We also assisted him preparing for transition because when we organized for an iBuster 1 coaching course we ensured that he participated and thank God he qualified. He has just not activated the coaching part of it but now that he has hung his gloves I believe he's going to now activate his coaching and start passing the knowledge that he has to youngsters and we hope he's going to groom youngsters who will perform just like he did or much better than he is. We are looking at his category in the lightweight category which he has dominated for a better part of I think a 20 year career that he has been in boxing and there are some names that you can tell us who actually take over from him now because he has really made a mark in the lightweight division. Yes we have several upcoming boxers who have been competing with him but what I can say, what I know from the reality on the ground is that the gap between him and the next boxers is very wide because the kind of experience he has when you have represented the country in more than 16 years at the top level. And locally he's been defeating. I think for the last maybe 5 years nobody has been defeated him. So I think the gap between him and the upcoming boxers is very wide but now it means that as a federation we need to do our homework well and give the upcoming boxers in that weight category some exposures so that they can be able to start building their experiences and so that when we take them for international assignments they are able to do it. Because for us as a country when we take our boxers out there we just don't take them to go and participate you want them to go out there and compete and win medals. So that's why you see sometimes the difference in experiences is very huge in that you have somebody whom you can reliably whenever you are going out you can say that you expect a medal from this person. Niko kut you expect a medal from him. But now if you take the next person in that weight category when you take them out there because they don't have that much experience you wouldn't be so confident that they are going to win a medal. But I believe there is a youngster who is coming up called Cleave Joshua Cleave they participate he was the runner up during the trials that we did for the Africa championship. He is in the youth national team and I believe he is very promising he started boxing way back when he was a junior and now he has become of age and where he is now competing with the likes of Niko Kut. So I believe he is a talented youth boxer who can be able to be nurtured by our coaches and become a champion just like Niko Kut was. There is also this kid who came in with a silver medal in actually the featherweight division that's Samuel Wajomun Jawa. He is also a new kid that not many people know him but what a performance he had in Maputo to get a silver medal. Actually I expected Jawa to win a gold medal. He is a new kid on the block he is not known so you see sometimes when you are known people will do research on you. The opposition also does research to know how they are going to continue but when you bring somebody who is top quality and he is not known he is somehow good because nobody knows how he plays. Nobody has this video clips of what to expect out of such. Fonjao is originally he came from G44 he is a club in Ghidorai 44 and then he was recruited by KDF so he is in the KDF team and he is the team captain. We took him for Africa zone 3 boxing championship in DRC Kinshasa and he won a gold medal earlier this year. So when we were now selecting the team because we also had a serious challenge to select the team to go for the Africa championship because like I told you we were 25. Actually we had about 29 boxes in camp and of course full team is 25 where we have 13 male and 12 female but now when we had financial difficulty and we had to select a smaller team to go and represent. We had a difficulty now trying to select who are the boxers that we are going to pick to go and represent us. And we thought Njao was very promising and we see him as somebody who is the next big thing in our local boxing scene because he is very talented he boxed very well and very soon he is going to be experienced enough because he hasn't had that much exposure because this was his second debut at the national team. So I believe he is somebody who has got a very promising future in the ring and I believe even when we go for the olympic qualifiers I believe he is one of the boxers that we respect to qualify for the Paris 2024 olympic games. And also we had also another kid born first Mugunde. Yeah, born first Mugunde at light middleweight category has done very well. Mugunde won bronze medal in the 2019 Africa games and that was his first international assignment. He is very promising. Of course some changes happened when Aiba now increased the weight categories so because born first Mugunde used to box at light weight category which was 69 kgs. But now once the adjustments were done he had to go upweight now he is boxing at light middleweight which is 71 kgs and he is performing very well. We took him for Africa zone 3 twice he has won a bronze and a silver. Now at the Africa championship he has won a bronze medal and that weight was very competitive. Even the common weight silver medalist from Mozambique was in that same weight category and he didn't get a medal. So it was a commendable performance for born first Mugunde to win the bronze medal because when you look at the quality in that weight class it's very tough. Even for olympic qualifier I know it will be very tough to pick the top four boxers in Africa. But if now he is winning medal at Africa championship I believe he should be one of the four boxers who will qualify for the olympic games 2024. Unfortunately last time we are very hopeful that Mugunde will qualify but now the world qualifiers didn't happen. We had an incident when we went for the africa olympic qualifiers. Mugunde boxed very well first round and then he got he was hit a lucky punch by a kanerunian boxer and knocked out. That's how he lost and the boxer who won that gold medal the kanerunian has since participated in zone 3 box in championship twice. Now in Africa championship he didn't win any medal so Mugunde is performing way better than the person who defeated him at the africa olympic qualifier. Ya he was lucky but okay it was I don't know the time we did the Africa qualifier he was boxing well because he went on to win the gold medal during the Africa qualifier. In Tokyo he didn't perform very well and even in the zone 3 box in championship Mugunde has been performing better than him by far. So I believe even where you go for the olympic qualifiers Mugunde has a very good chance of qualifying for the olympic games. As we finished this conversation of the Africa that was happening in Maputo we've got to talk about the lady Elizabeth and Diego also coming home with a silver medal. It's a big one for us. Ya very big. Actually she surprised me getting to the finals of the Africa championship and what surprised me even more was that when she travelled to Maputo she was travelling as a light heavyweight. Light heavyweight starts at 76 kgs and when she got to Maputo she was the only one in light heavyweight category so she could not win a medal if she is alone. So she had to gain 5 kgs in 3 days to compete at heavyweight category. We will talk about that when we come back. Let's go for a short commercial break when we come back we have to understand how we can win 5 kgs in 3 days to get to boxing. It is the touchline here on why 254 welcome back to the program. It's all about sports. We'll be coming back later with the funds to discuss everything about football but let's go back to the conversation we were having early in just a few minutes. When Duncan was telling me that Elizabeth had to gain 5 kgs in 3 days to compete in that competition. How did that come to happen? Ya like I told you she was supposed to compete at light heavyweight category but when she got to Mozambique she found that there were no other light heavyweights. She was the only one entered light heavyweight so she had to move weight category. And therefore she had to gain 5 kgs because light heavyweight category starts at 81 plus and she is at 76. So during the day of weighing in the day you have to compete in the morning you have to weigh in. And if you are underweight you can't compete. If you are overweight you can't compete. So we were risking that she might be underweight. And then it means she had to take a lot of water and eat a lot of food which again makes her uncomfortable. So it was not easy ensuring that she gained that weight. And also during that time she really minimized she was not training because when she trains the weight goes down and wants to go up. So she had a tough time gaining the weight but luckily she was able to attain the weight. So during the day she was weighing in for her semifinal bout where she was competing against a lady called Sintole from South Africa. It's a lady we had seen competing during the world championship in Istanbul. So at least she knew how the lady boxes and she performed very well because in her first bout as a heavyweight she managed to knock out the South African in the first round which was commendable. Well all in all we can say that the Maputo Competition for the African Championship was a very good outing for Kenya compared to the last edition. Ya by far. Ya because during the last edition you only had one finalist Niku Koth. This time round we had four finalists which was good. Although when you look at the quality of her position because now for Elizabeth and Diego. Yes. In the final she was competing against Mady Kadija from Morocco. A very experienced boxer. Kadija is a 2019 middleweight gold medalist. Africa Olympic qualifiers middleweight gold medalist. Now she has a story herself because during this time when we had a covid break she had qualified as a gold medalist in middleweight. Yes. For the Tokyo Olympic Games but now when we had that break when the Olympic Games were suspended she somehow got herself pregnant. Wow. And she gave birth 40 days to the beginning of the Olympic Games. So she was not able to compete at the Olympics. And she made her comeback this year during the world championships and she moved from middleweight now to heavyweight. And she managed to get to the finals of the world championship where she won a silver medal. And I think it was just bad luck. She looked to be in shape to win the gold medal at the world championship. So I knew it was going to be a very competitive game. It was going to be difficult for Elizabeth and Diego competing against Mady Kadija because she is huge. Yes. When you look at the body shapes she was way way way bigger than Elizabeth. She is tall so she knows how to use her height very well. And so Elizabeth had a very tough time trying to get her range competing against Kadija. Who is again we say it's a top quality boxer from Africa. And that's somebody whom even at the Olympic Games you expect her to go and win a medal. Because she is a top top Africa boxer. For somebody like Njao Njao we expected that fight to be competitive. So we expected him to win and I believe if we go for the Olympic qualifier and Njao meets the same boxer from Mozambique. Njao will qualify for the Olympics defeating that boxer from Mozambique because I don't believe it was that good. But just a few mistakes that Njao needs to correct and he'll be able to win. Nikokoz it was a very close bout. 3-2 judges. It means 3 judges voted that the champion won. 2 judges voted that Nik won. So it was that close. Out of the 5 judges in a ring they were split halfway. So I believe it was also a very competitive game and unfortunately we were not liking the day that none of the 3 decisions went our way. But I believe we are not doing very badly. I believe when we get back to work and prepare our boys better for the Olympic qualifiers we are likely to have more boxers qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Speaking about qualifications I understand also that the world youth championship trials are going on and also will be talking about the Olympics qualifications. But tell us about the trials for the world youth championship. Some of the young kiddos will be keeping our eyes on. In boxing we have 8 groups. We have school boys and girls. Then we have juniors. The juniors are from 16 to 16. Then we have youths at 17 and 18. So later this year in November we have world championship for the youth that is 17 and 18 years old. So we are having trials ongoing. I think the finals have just started at Jericho social hall now. I think we have 10 bouts. Somehow we didn't get very many boxers because I think we have about 49 male boxers and about 6 girls. We are trying to select a team that is going to represent us during the world championship to be held in November. I believe one of the things that might have made the boxers to be a bit fewer is the requirement that we put that somebody has to come with a bad certificate. Sometimes we need to prove the age of our athletes and we don't want to be involved in what they call age cheating. I think it's more ample in football but in boxing we thought it was very important that any boxers coming to compete they must produce their bad certificate to prove that they were born within the age limit that is provided. So I think the young guys who are there are doing a very good job. The tournament has been very competitive and you are expecting that at the end of the day we will be able to select good boxers who can be able to go and present the country effectively at the world championship. They also form a very good base because we expect them to graduate to seniors from the youth and I believe it will be good when we have very many of them competing and challenging the seniors at the elite level and that will ensure that the future of boxing in the country is going to be sustained for many years to come because we expect to continue doing the juniors and school boys and girls tournament so that we give youngsters chance to showcase their talent and I believe we are going places in boxing this time round. We are still hanging out with Dan Kankura is actually the communications director boxing federation of Kenya and we are talking about mostly what is happening in the world of boxing and let's talk about also the Olympic qualifiers that are also coming up. So when we were talking of Alia it just comes to my mind that boxing qualifying for the Olympics from a boxing perspective looks to be one of the toughest stages to go through for you to qualify for the Olympics. Ya, it's not easy to qualify for Olympics and especially like now you know in the past like when Wangila won his gold medal in 1988 Kenya could take a full team of 12 boxers to the Olympics and that's what they did. Kenya alone took 12 boxers but you see now from 1992 that's when now we brought in the qualifying process where boxers for you to go and represent the country at the Olympic games you have to qualify in the continent. So it's Africa. So normally they take the top 4 boxers in every weight category although when you went for the Tokyo Olympic games it was a bit different because like for the lower weights you had 3 boxers in each weight category qualifying for the Olympic games and in the higher weights which is the heavyweight and super heavyweights you are only picking the top 2 boxers in Africa. So sometimes it saddens me because you find in some of our groups of people we thought are informed journalists discussing how we are taking older boxers to the Olympic games and it's not like it's boxing federation of Kenya taking the boxers to the Olympic games. These boxers go for Olympic qualifiers and qualify as the top boxers in Africa to be able to participate at the Olympic games and so it's not easy to qualify for Olympic games and it's a dream for each and every athlete to be able to participate at the Olympic games and we are very lucky as a country because we have never failed to qualify for Olympic games and we expect even in the 2024 Olympic games we are going to have representative there. Well tomorrow also we are going to be having the international boxing association extra ordinary congress that will be coming up in Armenia and they understand also our president will be representing us. What do we expect? What are some of the major decisions that will be coming out of that congress or what are some of the key decisions that people are waiting for from that congress? Yes, tomorrow we have an extra ordinary congress, it's going to be happening in Armenia, here in the capital of Armenia city and we believe that the key decisions to be done are two. When the congress starts there is a decision that has to be taken on whether we are going to have presidential election because I believe in the congress that was done in Istanbul in May. We elected Umar Kremlov as the president of international boxing association and later on one of the candidates who was disqualified, Mr. Boris van der Wost from Netherlands went and protested the decision at the court of arbitration for sports and the decision of eliminating him from the presidential race was reversed. The boxing integrity unit that disqualified him was said to have gone overboard, they should not have disqualified him because I think he has done a small mistake of early campaigns. So now the congress is supposed to decide whether we are going to have presidential election and then if they agree that we are going to have new elections now we are going to vote. There is an earlier meeting that has been done where they are likely to have only two candidates, the current president who is Umar Kremlov from Russia and now Boris van der Wost from Netherlands. Us as boxing federation of Kenya we are fully behind the current president Mr. Umar Kremlov because I believe he has done so much for boxing. Just now we have just from analyzing Africa boxing championship and maybe there is something very important we forgot that during this Africa boxing championship for the first time in the history of Africa boxing championship boxers were given cash awards. For boxers who won gold medal they were getting $10,000, our three boxers who got the final and won silver medals each got $5,000 and Boniface Mugunde who got a bronze medal won himself $2,500. That is the first time that has been done in Africa boxing and it has been done courtesy of the current IBA president Mr. Umar Kremlov. So I believe it is very important that as a continent we ensure that we support the current president to continue with the many different initiatives that he has started to reform boxing in the world. The most important thing will be to support him so that he is able to push the agenda of boxing especially having to go back to the Olympic family because we have a challenge. Like even for the Olympic qualifiers that are coming the international Olympic committee has decided that they are going to organize boxing themselves that we have challenges in IBA. So we thought it is a bit unfair but I believe if we give Mr. Umar Kremlov a chance to be able to lead the international federation he is likely to bring much improvement that is required in the sport. And I believe the future of boxing is very bright with Umar at the helm because he has been able to transform so much. He has given so many equipment to different federations and equipment is what help us to tap talent at the grass road level. Like when he came to Kenya he was able to give us more than 100 boxing gloves, 100 headgears and pads which we distributed to different gloves which he had identified before coming. So I believe that is the kind of leadership that we require to be able to transform the sport. But during the world championship that were done both in Belgrade and in Istanbul the boxers who are winning there were getting prize money $100,000 for winning a gold medal, $70,000 for a silver medal and $50,000 for a bronze medal. I believe that is the kind of money that you win as an athlete it transforms your life for good. So I believe Umar is good for the sport and tomorrow we are going to make that decision. The federation we don't see why we need to go back to election because we made a decision and we could see most of the international federation believe Umar Kremlin is the best for boxing at the moment. Probably maybe IOC might be having a different feeling that Umar might not be the best. We had a problem with him being Russian and the problem with Russia and Ukraine and also there was a problem in the sense that one of the key sponsors of boxing international federation in Gazpo which is from Russia is an oil company from Russia is one of the main sponsors of the International Boxing Association and IOC had reason some questions about that but I believe nevertheless Umar has the best interest of improving the status of boxing in the world and we are going to support him fully. Briefly let's talk about the kickoff of the national league boxing also coming up next week. How is it structured and how is it going to happen? Yes, this time we had a very busy international assignment much earlier in the year that we were not able to start our national boxing league and we are going to start it next week from 29th to 1st. It's going to be in Transoya County, Kitale. So it's rotating? It rotates, that's first leg. So we are going to have five legs. The first one is going to happen in Transoya. I believe the second one is going to Meru. The third one will go to Likipia County. The fourth one will go to Mombasa County and the fifth one will go to Kesumo County. So we normally go around different counties so that we are able to attract as many people into the sport of boxing as possible. So all boxers they should prepare. We meet from Thursday in Kitale and it's the first time boxing is going to Kitale because Transoya is relatively new at boxing. These are now fruits of the new constitution and the sports act of 2013 because we had not devolved boxing to the grassroot level. But this time around we are going to Transoya County for the very first time. We are hoping to get good reception there. We are hoping to inspire more boxers from that area. I know in my inbox I get a lot of requests from some counties where so far we don't have boxing clubs like Wasengishu. And I believe it's a high time of the federation we go to an area like Wasengishu County and top talent there because there are so many boxers who request me if they can join boxing even up an area like Kericho County. Sometimes we know you are advising them to go. The nearest is Kesumo County which is the neighborhood but I believe every county that has got talent we need to give them a chance to be able to showcase their talent and uneven from the sport. And I believe the future of the sport is very bright and we are going to assure that as many counties as possible get registered and we get those county boxing associations so that they can be able to continue tapping talent at the county level. And I believe when we have counties that are very competitive then definitely when we do our national tournaments it's going to be very competitive and we go back to some of those old days when we had national leagues who are very competitive we could be able to send four different teams to four different international assignments and all come back with victories. So I believe it's still possible but we need some work to be able to build the structures that are there and make them better so that when we get to now doing these tournaments we get very high turn out of boxers and issues just not to produce the volumes but also quality. So we also need to look at the coaching aspect of the sport at the local level because we need to have coaches who are qualified at the local level producing talent with the right basics so that when we come to the national team we are again not having to teach basics because those basics have been taught and mastered at the local level and when you get to the national team level just polishing that talent and taking it out there to make the country proud. Well thanks a lot Duncan, that has been Duncan Kuruya with the Communications Director of Boxing Association Boxing Federation of Kenya actually, pardon me for that. I'm Robert Osoro, it is the touchline. Let's enjoy some highlights of England losing to Italy, Warnill in the UF Nations League and also Hungary winning Warnill against Germany. When we come back it will be all about the fund zone.