T&T boxer wants foreign exposure for Tokyo

Michael Alexan­der is con­vinced that if he gets qual­i­ty spar­ring part­ners, any­thing is pos­si­ble come next year at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

“I need a lit­tle more trav­el­ling, camp wise, go­ing to dif­fer­ent coun­tries and get more spar­ring,” Alexan­der said af­ter his 5-0 de­ci­sion de­feat to Amer­i­can Keyshawn Davis in their men’s light wel­ter­weight semi­fi­nal bout on Tues­day night here at the Miguel Grau Col­i­se­um.

“In Trinidad and in the Caribbean, I have al­ready sur­passed that lev­el of spar­ring. I mean the train­ing is very well with my coach Mr Reynold Cox and An­tho­ny Dop­well but oth­er than that as a box­er you need plen­ty spar­ring part­ners and in my weight it hard­ly have that in Trinidad.

“So I need to trav­el to oth­er coun­tries that have top of the line Olympic-style box­ers like Cu­ba, USA and so forth, to get more ex­pe­ri­ence so when I come out here.

“Just imag­ine I don’t have that much spar­ring part­ners in Trinidad and if I could still be on the podi­um, imag­ine if I get the train­ing that I need, imag­ine what I can do for Trinidad.”

The 26-year-old box­er was all smiles af­ter get­ting T&T’s first medal at the Games af­ter his loss to the USA box­er. The los­ing semi­fi­nal­ists are award­ed the bronze medals.

“I am pleased with my per­for­mance at my first Pan Amer­i­can Games,” Alexan­der as he as­sessed his out­ing.

“Plus this is one of the hard­est box­ers in the world in my weight di­vi­sion and I am just pleased to qual­i­fy for Pan Am Games and take part in it and still come home with hard­ware for the first time and you don’t have noth­ing to lose in box­ing but gain ex­pe­ri­ence and this a hell of an ex­pe­ri­ence for me as a box­er prepar­ing for World Cham­pi­onships in Rus­sia and the up­com­ing Olympics.”

With en­thu­si­as­tic cheers from the T&T sup­port­ers, among them deputy chef de mis­sion Lovie San­tana and mem­bers of the beach vol­ley­ball team, Alexan­der put up a good fight against Amer­i­can Davis, who cap­tured sil­ver at the Pan Amer­i­can Games Qual­i­fi­er in Nicaragua in ad­di­tion to the 2018 Chem­istry Cup in Ger­many, to put T&T on the medals ta­ble.

Alexan­der was thrilled he had won T&T’s first medal, say­ing: “It was a great ex­pe­ri­ence for me, I am pleased and over­whelmed with my­self that I can still come home with hard­ware for my coun­try.”

Coach Cox was al­so proud of his young box­er’s achieve­ment but ad­mit­ted he has a lot of work to do if he is to get suc­cess in Japan at the world’s pre­mier sport­ing event.

“The tac­ti­cal plan was good, the fall back was his con­di­tion­ing. I think it could have been bet­ter to sus­tain the kind of at­tack dur­ing the fight even when the guy changed his style, he wasn’t able to pick it up as much,” Cox said as he as­sessed how his fight­er adapt­ed to the fight.

“I was pleased with his per­for­mance. My fo­cus right now is the Olympic Games next year and all this is just prepa­ra­tion for it. I mean get­ting the medal is one part, I’m hap­py about that but dis­ap­point­ed with the over­all team per­for­mance. But I think we are mak­ing the step in the right di­rec­tion to qual­i­fy Michael for the 2020 Olympic Games and prob­a­bly get on the podi­um in Tokyo.”

In oth­er box­ing re­sults ear­li­er this week, Nigel Paul lost to Colom­bian Cami­lo Co­dazzi Sal­cedo in the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the men’s su­per heavy­weight (+91kg) di­vi­sion, Ty­ron Thomas fell to Ro­han Emil­iano Polan­co in the men’s wel­ter­weight (69kg) quar­ter­fi­nals and Aaron Prince was in­jured in the third round of his men’s mid­dleweight (75kg) quar­ter­fi­nal bout ver­sus Les­ther Es­pino.

Daniel 19th in pis­tol pre­lims

Roger Daniel will have to make some ma­jor im­prove­ments to­day if he wants to chal­lenge for one of the top po­si­tions in the men’s 25-me­tres rapid fire pis­tol event.

Yes­ter­day at the Las Pal­mas Range in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round, the lo­cal shoot­er closed stage one in 19th place with a score of 271. Cuban Jorge Al­varez was atop the stand­ings with a score of 291.

Daniel will there­fore have to be a lot more ac­cu­rate in stage two to­day to make the cut for the six-man fi­nal.

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