Team picked, union unsure about number of divisions

THERE is some confusion about how many weight divisions there will be for men and women in July’s Pacific Games boxing.
PNG Amateur Boxing Union general secretary Dr Gideon Kendino said while they had already named their training squad for the Apia, Samoa, event, he was still unsure if the organisers would follow the Aiba (International Boxing Association) advice on the number of divisions for men and women.
“The squad was selected soon after the trials which ended on Jan 25 as per PNG Olympic Committee’s deadline so we emailed the tentative A and B squads to PNGOC so they could email Pacific Games Council to secure the entry by numbers requirements and PNGOC justification committee deadlines,” Kendino said.
“We could not however release the names due this reason.
“We are trying to confirm whether there will be four or only three women’s divisions within the 51kg, 57kg, 69kg and 75kg divisions.
“Likewise for the men’s we are not sure whether we will have eight or the full 10 weight divisions (49kg to 91kg plus).
“This information is not forthcoming from the Pacific Games Council yet,” Kendino added.
“This is all the more confusing because in the Aiba world congress in Moscow last December which PNGABU president John Avira and I attended, we were told that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics would only have eight men’s divisions and women’s would be increased to five divisions.
“This is to allow more women participation and also boxing to be seen as encompassing gender equality.”
Dr Kendino said he found it “odd” that the Samoa 2019 Pacific Games was not taking the cue from boxing’s world governing body and not confirming the weight categories to be competed in later this year.
The IOC (International Olympic Committee) had approved, in line with the objective of the gender equality of the agenda 2020, to introduce two additional women’s weight categories and reduce the number of men’s categories from 10 to eight at the Olympic Games.
Following the recommendations of its commissions, the AIBA executive committee approved to merge the men’s five lightest weight classes into the three divisions (flyweight – 48kg-52kg, featherweight – 57kg, lightweight – 63kg) that presented to the congress in November, 2018.
Although these weight categories are pending an official approval of the IOC, the upcoming men’s world championships (Sept 7-21) would only include eight weight categories.
The women’s world championships would include all 10 weight categories however, female boxers would qualify for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 only in the following weight categories: flyweight (48kg-51kg), featherweight (57kg), lightweight (60kg), welterweight (69kg) and middleweight (75kg).