2 Kenyan boxers granted Tokyo Olympics slots

Kenyan boxers Elizabeth Akinyi and Elly Ochola are the latest entrants to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games, the IOC Boxing Task Force announced on Friday.

The Boxing Task Force (BTF) confirmed to National Olympics Committee-Kenya (NOCK) that the two boxers were given a quota place to the Games through the BTF Rankings.

Akinyi and Ochola, welterweight and heavyweight boxers respectively, were both bronze medalists at the Africa qualifiers which were held in Dakar, Senegal in February 2020.

The two boxers now joined their fellow Kenyans boxers Nick Okoth who will compete in men’s featherweight and Christine Ongare who will compete in flyweight.

Okoth and Ongare earned their automatic qualification status during the African Qualifiers last year.

Kenya’s Chef-de-Mission to Tokyo Olympics Waithaka Kioni confirmed the quotas.

“We congratulate the two boxers for earning a place in the team for Tokyo.

“We acknowledge that the boxers have been training very diligently since the resumption of sports, and they deserve these two slots that they have been allocated by IOC,” Kioni said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

The BTF restructured the remaining qualification path, with the 53 quota places originally assigned to the Final World Qualifier to be distributed equally across all regions.

The regions are Africa, Asia, Oceania, Americas and Europe.

Sixteen other boxers are set to compete in Kinshasa, Congo for a Zone 3 boxing championship that will be played from Saturday to March 26. (Xinhua/NAN)

For Diaspora Digital Media Updates click on Whatsapp, or Telegram. For eyewitness accounts/ reports/ articles, write to: citizenreports@diasporadigitalmedia.com. Follow us on X (Fomerly Twitter) or Facebook