Article added: Tuesday 02 March 2021

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Hi all,

I hope this update finds all well and recovered from the Nationals and looking forward to the new season.

In this newsletter I would like to bring all members up to date with events in our sport and where we are going in the future.

Competition

Not a lot happening on the national or international level aside from our local tournaments. The next big one for us is of course the Golden Gloves in both islands.

The Paris Olympic World qualifying tournament has been cancelled

This has been a major blow to New Zealand boxers wishing to have the final chance to qualify. The qualification standard for those who did not qualify at the confederation qualifiers will now be decided on a points assessment based on several international tournaments.

This assessment is managed by the International Olympic Committee boxing task force.

Boxing New Zealand believes the ranking assessment disadvantages New Zealand athletes who did not qualify at the Jordan qualifier and we are pursuing this matter with the boxing task force.

There are now several other countries who have the same complaints as us, mostly involving the countback going back to 2017. This time period does not account for up and coming boxers who have performed well on the world stage of late.

Another problem for athletes wishing to get international competition for an Olympic lead in is getting MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) quotas.

Three specific events will take preference over others. These are the Tokyo Olympics and  Paralympic Winter Games and the Rugby World Cup.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) is trying to get quotas for athletes wishing to compete internationally. At present the list favours athletes who still have qualifying events to attend and not athletes seeking pre-Olympic international competition. However, the NZOC is presenting a list of what is called focus athletes, these are athletes who are considered to be medal prospects, they will get preference over others to seek international training. David Nyika is on this list.

After attending a NZOC workshop on this subject, it is clear that these Olympic Games will be extraordinary in terms of just how athletes and support staff will attend and compete.There are many logistical problems to overcome and much work by High Performance New Zealand (HPNZ) and the NZOC.

AIBA (International Boxing Association)

Most will know that the AIBA has a new president, the Russian Umar Kremlev.

Boxing NZ supported the Dutchman Boris Van der Vorst.

The IOC has recently published a letter to AIBA that makes it pretty clear that they do not accept the construction of the AIBA executive as it stands along with the lack of a financial plan to address AIBA debt.

The most worrying statement from the IOC is they have reiterated again, that if these issues are not remedied then future participation for boxing in the Olympic movement will be in doubt.

If this was to transpire, New Zealand and many other smaller countries would be stuffed. The Olympic ``carrot” is a major drawcard for our sport. To be part of the Olympic movement is a major asset and advantage we have over many other sports.

Boxing New Zealand chairman Keith Walker and myself had a personal call from Mr Kremlev a few nights ago and we mentioned the requirement from the IOC to clean out many of the members of the AIBA executive who are not acceptable to the IOC. (the executive of AIBA is composed of elected confederation  presidents).

We put it to him asking “what was he going to do about it?”. His reply was to the point “what are we going to do about it?”.

His meaning was it is really up to the confederations to elect presidents and executive members that will be acceptable to AIBA. This was a valid point and the Oceania confederation must address this issue, the ball is in our own court.

Ted Tanner from Australia is the Oceania president and by all accounts is doing a good job. The job is time consuming and requires someone of Ted’s calibre to do it.If Ted is one of the people not acceptable to the IOC then we have a problem within.I do not believe there is anyone else at present who can fit this role.

As you can see this is a difficult situation to remedy to the satisfaction of the IOC.

Personally, I believe AIBA has made progress on some of the matters that concern the IOC but it seems that the IOC want more action. I also believe there is some personal politics involved in this play. Many of the older members of both entities know each other and there appears to be some old scores to settle.

The state of AOB (AIBA Open Boxing) Boxing NZ

A major talking point for our sport at present is the Olympics and future participation at that event but there are other things to be considered including:

Professional Boxing

Some may be aware that a few of our elite high performance athletes, including David Nyika and Jerome Pampellone, are boxing or wishing to box in the professional division.

AIBA has allowed this to occur although they have no clear rulings to assist federations in the conduct of this. National organisations do have some discretion to rule just how this is to be conducted in their own backyards and in some countries, such as England, they allow professional boxers with six professional bouts or less to take part in AOB boxing. This ruling is to ensure the safety of the AOB participant.

Due the inability to secure international competition, Boxing NZ is allowing high performance squad boxers to box as professionals and compete as AOB boxers as part of their preparation for possible Olympic selection.

Boxing NZ will allow these people to return back to AOB, provided they have no more than five pro bouts. AOB boxers who turn professional can return back to AOB boxing only once. They cannot keep yo-yoing between amateur and professional boxing. 

Further to this we have annex G in our rules which allows Boxing NZ to conduct professional boxing as part of our sport. However this annex requires updating and people to administer it.

Boxing NZ is receptive to reviving this part of boxing, but requires assistance to do so.If anyone has the ability to assist then please contact us.

Speaking of professional boxing, recently Boxing NZ was allocated tickets to the Joseph Parker / Junior Fa bout in Auckland last week. Most of these tickets were issued to the referees and judges and tournament officials who were to officiate for the David Nyika bout but due to logistics of the cross over between amateur rules, professional rules and Boxing NZ sanctioning the bout and the risk involved, we came to an agreement with David Higgins which provided for the officials to receive admission to the event for free in lieu of officiating. There were several spare tickets which were allocated to Keith Walker x 2, Dr John McKay x 2 and myself x 2.

Corporate Boxing

We are still in limbo as far as “corporate” boxing goes. We have been waiting for direction from the Department of Internal Affairs regarding positioning ourselves to fit what should be new legislation surrounding this code of boxing.

We are still reporting to coroners investigating recent deaths and have suggested changes to legislation that will eventually dictate how corporate coxing is to be legislated.

Boxing NZ has no jurisdiction to prevent members from engaging in this type of activity but at present we will not sanction such events until the terms of trade are clear and precise.

LGBTQ + Participation in Boxing

I have been approached by a member of the rainbow community regarding holding a Rainbow Boxing Championship.  They wish to hold an event that will coincide with the World Rainbow Boxing Championships to be held in Sydney in 2023.

Boxing NZ does not discriminate against any members of any New Zealand communities and we will do what we can to work in with this community but we have no obligation to conduct a separate championship for the LGBTQ+ community and a lot of thought will have to go into the extent of our involvement. As far as LGBTQ+ participation in our sport goes there are probably gays or lesbians successfully competing already. It is not one’s business to be concerned with sexual orientation, however there is one area that will be contentious.  This is the wish for male to female transgender wishing to compete as female. There may also be the possibility of female to male transgender persons wishing to compete as male.

Boxing New Zealand’s first duty of care is to the members of our boxing community who participate in AOB competition.

An argument based on whether gender is binary, non-binary or a social construct is not the concern of Boxing NZ. What is of concern is the biological differences in terms of muscle mass, bone density, strength and fast twitch fibres which differ greatly between biological males and females. 

Regardless of testosterone reduction the physical advantages of a transgender male to female over a biological female are great, in particular the advantage of a male over female in punching force is over 160 percent. This advantage, regardless of partial reduction in strength and muscle mass through testosterone reduction, will still result in a great risk of injury for the biological female participant of such a contest.

I have already fielded a rather difficult call from a transgender male to female who wishes to box females in order to “win a title”. 

This is a very contentious subject but for the time being the prospect of cross gender participation will not be considered by the current executive of Boxing NZ until science, data and empirical, peer reviewed study can prove there is little or no risk to the female participants in our sport.

Wheelchair Boxing

I have also been approached by a person with a physical disability that necessitates the use of a wheelchair asking if we can assist themselves and similar persons in participating in AOB boxing.

This is another difficult request for Boxing NZ. At present we may have to sit on this one  (no pun intended) until we receive more information regarding exactly what is expected or what is required for this to occur.

Sport New Zealand

Government funding (for us this comes from Sport NZ) is now dependent on how we comply things such as diversity, inclusion and intersectionality. There is a definite political agenda coming from our government and we are caught up in it.

I have been rather vocal when I have felt the non-partisan commonality  that our sport embraces is threatened by divisive factors such as funding to specific groups rather than all.

One of the factors that makes this sport so amazing is that ethnic origin and gender are invisible. All are simply participants.

Unfortunately, these social/political agendas have an impact when it comes to compliance and funding eligibility. 

Like all sports we pride ourselves on inclusion, diversity in our sport and I believe we should not be held accountable to be consistently proving it when the participants prove the point.

Sport NZ must realise that sports see their participants as exactly that, participants. Ethnic origin, sexuality, socio demographics or political alignment are secondary to just getting young and old people involved and participating.

Sport NZ directly contradicts itself by promoting inclusion for all but on the other hand promotes various individual identities over others. What we have seen in the last 24 months is the disconnect of Sport NZ from sport, the NZOC and HPSNZ.Sport NZ has become more centred around socio politics than promoting competition sports. They have not performed for many sports, especially regarding promoting the participation of NZ sports for the up and coming Tokyo Olympics. 

There is now a last-minute rush to secure MIQ spots for our athletes post Olympics thanks to their tardiness. 

Sport NZ is not fulfilling its role in promoting sport and must be bought to task.

I now have the annual investment criteria to sort out to keep the feeble funding we receive. 

Once more a great proportion of this requirement centres around political machinations.Sport NZ now has a new leader, Rayleen Castle. Boxing NZ will be seeking a meeting with her soon to discuss failings on their behalf that have affected our sport. Hopefully we may see some changes away from the present.

The future of AOB boxing in NZ

As you can see from all the above these are very complicated times and our sport must move with the times to survive.

Due to the IOC not recognising AIBA as an Olympic beneficiary, they have withheld Olympic solidarity funding. Boxing NZ would normally benefit approximately $100,000 per annum from this payout.  Also, the TAB funding has virtually dried up so, financially, we have little to commit to developing boxing. We need a plan to survive.

We believe the focus of Boxing NZ is to raise the public profile of our sport, increase participation and develop income streams that will benefit the youth of our sport.

The first part of this has been to invest our resources into building profile via producing live streaming and commentary that can go out to the public. The NZ Sports Collective and Sky Sport have played a big role in this. As you all will be aware we are in a building process that will determine how we will exist in the future and exposure from Sky Sport Next and of course Sky Sport Live has proven there is a captive audience out there and I am sure we can build on this with further promotion. The proof of viewer numbers and their personal demographics is a very good tool for the possibility of future sponsorship. The proof of numbers may also make Sport NZ sit up and take notice and recognise us for what we really are. We are a community asset that plays a big role in giving to youth, especially youth from the lower socio economic communities, a chance to change their lives for the better.

The feedback from members, especially our youth, has been extremely positive. They are very excited to see their sport out there for their whanau and the public to see. If we can keep forward momentum with this then who knows where we can go.Manny Phol and Isaac Savage are our go-to guys for building a communication channel to our youth as well as other duties. In time we should see our younger members more involved in the direction of our sport through their work.

On the last census (2018) we have provided proof of over 10,000 participants in Boxing NZ accredited gyms and clubs. The story we still have to sell is that even though we have 700-plus competition athletes, we have thousands of other affiliate members. (Sorry to hit you guys with this but we are designing two more censuses relating to the investment criteria requirements. One will be a member satisfaction census and the other a participation census. We will need your help to get the feedback and numbers).

The position we are in now is that we may have created a monster within, while we were thrilled to see the numbers of viewers exceeded expectations (and I believe we can increase these numbers exponentially with further exposure) we have to look at the financial cost of production.

The Golden Gloves cost approximately $10,500 for two days to employ AVP to do the production and $17,500 for the New Zealand Championships in Wellington. We had $7500 from Sky Sport to contribute to production and we were very grateful to the Wellington-Hutt Valley Boxing Association assisting us to pay the bill for the nationals.

However, we cannot burden future associations wishing to hold the New Zealand Championships or Golden Gloves with the large financial cost of television production so I am relying on the Sports Collective to do its job and get the required funding from SKY.Out of interest we had over 51,000 views for the National Championships.

A consulting company from the USA has collated the data from viewership and given us some interesting data that will hopefully assist with finding a suitable sponsor for the next major event. 

Referees, judges and supervisors

Recently we completed and qualified people to be accredited supervisors at tournaments throughout New Zealand.  We had 30-plus people participate in the accreditation process and they are now accredited.  Every tournament should/must have one of these persons as supervisor for the event. The office will send out the names and their contacts to all associations so that when they request for a permit they will name the supervisor as well as referees and judges for the event.

We now have another urgent matter that must be dealt with and that is getting more referees and judges accredited.  It was noticeable last year that when we called for R/J’s for our nationals that we had a very small number who put their names forward for consideration.  Many associations are now struggling to get officials for tournaments and we have noticed that some who have been the mainstay for associations have either retired or are reaching that stage.

We call on all associations to encourage people in their area who have a desire to be involved in our sport to put their names forward to become referees or judges. We will hold training sessions around the country when we have sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile or we will hold virtual meetings which will keep costs down.

We are all aware that without officials, tournaments will not happen and that would be a disaster for our athletes. 

Boxing NZ has agreed that coaches may become qualified R&J’s and officiate at tournaments. Coaches have moaned for years about judging results so here’s a good chance to do something about it. If there is no interest in coaches becoming judging then don’t come to us moaning about future results when an opportunity has been given to make a difference. 

Take care allSteve HartleyPresidentBoxing New Zealand

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Hi all,

I hope this update finds all well and recovered from the Nationals and looking forward to the new season.

In this newsletter I would like to bring all members up to date with events in our sport and where we are going in the future.

Competition

Not a lot happening on the national or international level aside from our local tournaments. The next big one for us is of course the Golden Gloves in both islands.

The Paris Olympic World qualifying tournament has been cancelled

This has been a major blow to New Zealand boxers wishing to have the final chance to qualify. The qualification standard for those who did not qualify at the confederation qualifiers will now be decided on a points assessment based on several international tournaments.

This assessment is managed by the International Olympic Committee boxing task force.

Boxing New Zealand believes the ranking assessment disadvantages New Zealand athletes who did not qualify at the Jordan qualifier and we are pursuing this matter with the boxing task force.

There are now several other countries who have the same complaints as us, mostly involving the countback going back to 2017. This time period does not account for up and coming boxers who have performed well on the world stage of late.

Another problem for athletes wishing to get international competition for an Olympic lead in is getting MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) quotas.

Three specific events will take preference over others. These are the Tokyo Olympics and  Paralympic Winter Games and the Rugby World Cup.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) is trying to get quotas for athletes wishing to compete internationally. At present the list favours athletes who still have qualifying events to attend and not athletes seeking pre-Olympic international competition. However, the NZOC is presenting a list of what is called focus athletes, these are athletes who are considered to be medal prospects, they will get preference over others to seek international training. David Nyika is on this list.

After attending a NZOC workshop on this subject, it is clear that these Olympic Games will be extraordinary in terms of just how athletes and support staff will attend and compete.

There are many logistical problems to overcome and much work by High Performance New Zealand (HPNZ) and the NZOC.

AIBA (International Boxing Association)

Most will know that the AIBA has a new president, the Russian Umar Kremlev.

Boxing NZ supported the Dutchman Boris Van der Vorst.

The IOC has recently published a letter to AIBA that makes it pretty clear that they do not accept the construction of the AIBA executive as it stands along with the lack of a financial plan to address AIBA debt.

The most worrying statement from the IOC is they have reiterated again, that if these issues are not remedied then future participation for boxing in the Olympic movement will be in doubt.

If this was to transpire, New Zealand and many other smaller countries would be stuffed. The Olympic ``carrot” is a major drawcard for our sport. To be part of the Olympic movement is a major asset and advantage we have over many other sports.

Boxing New Zealand chairman Keith Walker and myself had a personal call from Mr Kremlev a few nights ago and we mentioned the requirement from the IOC to clean out many of the members of the AIBA executive who are not acceptable to the IOC. (the executive of AIBA is composed of elected confederation  presidents).

We put it to him asking “what was he going to do about it?”. His reply was to the point “what are we going to do about it?”.

His meaning was it is really up to the confederations to elect presidents and executive members that will be acceptable to AIBA. This was a valid point and the Oceania confederation must address this issue, the ball is in our own court.

Ted Tanner from Australia is the Oceania president and by all accounts is doing a good job. The job is time consuming and requires someone of Ted’s calibre to do it.

If Ted is one of the people not acceptable to the IOC then we have a problem within.

I do not believe there is anyone else at present who can fit this role.

As you can see this is a difficult situation to remedy to the satisfaction of the IOC.

Personally, I believe AIBA has made progress on some of the matters that concern the IOC but it seems that the IOC want more action. I also believe there is some personal politics involved in this play. Many of the older members of both entities know each other and there appears to be some old scores to settle.

The state of AOB (AIBA Open Boxing) Boxing NZ

A major talking point for our sport at present is the Olympics and future participation at that event but there are other things to be considered including:

Professional Boxing

Some may be aware that a few of our elite high performance athletes, including David Nyika and Jerome Pampellone, are boxing or wishing to box in the professional division.

AIBA has allowed this to occur although they have no clear rulings to assist federations in the conduct of this. National organisations do have some discretion to rule just how this is to be conducted in their own backyards and in some countries, such as England, they allow professional boxers with six professional bouts or less to take part in AOB boxing. This ruling is to ensure the safety of the AOB participant.

Due the inability to secure international competition, Boxing NZ is allowing high performance squad boxers to box as professionals and compete as AOB boxers as part of their preparation for possible Olympic selection.

Boxing NZ will allow these people to return back to AOB, provided they have no more than five pro bouts. AOB boxers who turn professional can return back to AOB boxing only once. They cannot keep yo-yoing between amateur and professional boxing.

Further to this we have annex G in our rules which allows Boxing NZ to conduct professional boxing as part of our sport. However this annex requires updating and people to administer it.

Boxing NZ is receptive to reviving this part of boxing, but requires assistance to do so.

If anyone has the ability to assist then please contact us.

Speaking of professional boxing, recently Boxing NZ was allocated tickets to the Joseph Parker / Junior Fa bout in Auckland last week. Most of these tickets were issued to the referees and judges and tournament officials who were to officiate for the David Nyika bout but due to logistics of the cross over between amateur rules, professional rules and Boxing NZ sanctioning the bout and the risk involved, we came to an agreement with David Higgins which provided for the officials to receive admission to the event for free in lieu of officiating. There were several spare tickets which were allocated to Keith Walker x 2, Dr John McKay x 2 and myself x 2.

Corporate Boxing

We are still in limbo as far as “corporate” boxing goes. We have been waiting for direction from the Department of Internal Affairs regarding positioning ourselves to fit what should be new legislation surrounding this code of boxing.

We are still reporting to coroners investigating recent deaths and have suggested changes to legislation that will eventually dictate how corporate coxing is to be legislated.

Boxing NZ has no jurisdiction to prevent members from engaging in this type of activity but at present we will not sanction such events until the terms of trade are clear and precise.

LGBTQ + Participation in Boxing

I have been approached by a member of the rainbow community regarding holding a Rainbow Boxing Championship.  They wish to hold an event that will coincide with the World Rainbow Boxing Championships to be held in Sydney in 2023.

Boxing NZ does not discriminate against any members of any New Zealand communities and we will do what we can to work in with this community but we have no obligation to conduct a separate championship for the LGBTQ+ community and a lot of thought will have to go into the extent of our involvement.

As far as LGBTQ+ participation in our sport goes there are probably gays or lesbians successfully competing already. It is not one’s business to be concerned with sexual orientation, however there is one area that will be contentious.  This is the wish for male to female transgender wishing to compete as female. There may also be the possibility of female to male transgender persons wishing to compete as male.

Boxing New Zealand’s first duty of care is to the members of our boxing community who participate in AOB competition.

An argument based on whether gender is binary, non-binary or a social construct is not the concern of Boxing NZ. What is of concern is the biological differences in terms of muscle mass, bone density, strength and fast twitch fibres which differ greatly between biological males and females.

Regardless of testosterone reduction the physical advantages of a transgender male to female over a biological female are great, in particular the advantage of a male over female in punching force is over 160 percent. This advantage, regardless of partial reduction in strength and muscle mass through testosterone reduction, will still result in a great risk of injury for the biological female participant of such a contest.

I have already fielded a rather difficult call from a transgender male to female who wishes to box females in order to “win a title”.

This is a very contentious subject but for the time being the prospect of cross gender participation will not be considered by the current executive of Boxing NZ until science, data and empirical, peer reviewed study can prove there is little or no risk to the female participants in our sport.

Wheelchair Boxing

I have also been approached by a person with a physical disability that necessitates the use of a wheelchair asking if we can assist themselves and similar persons in participating in AOB boxing.

This is another difficult request for Boxing NZ. At present we may have to sit on this one  (no pun intended) until we receive more information regarding exactly what is expected or what is required for this to occur.

Sport New Zealand

Government funding (for us this comes from Sport NZ) is now dependent on how we comply things such as diversity, inclusion and intersectionality. There is a definite political agenda coming from our government and we are caught up in it.

I have been rather vocal when I have felt the non-partisan commonality  that our sport embraces is threatened by divisive factors such as funding to specific groups rather than all.

One of the factors that makes this sport so amazing is that ethnic origin and gender are invisible. All are simply participants.

Unfortunately, these social/political agendas have an impact when it comes to compliance and funding eligibility.

Like all sports we pride ourselves on inclusion, diversity in our sport and I believe we should not be held accountable to be consistently proving it when the participants prove the point.

Sport NZ must realise that sports see their participants as exactly that, participants. Ethnic origin, sexuality, socio demographics or political alignment are secondary to just getting young and old people involved and participating.

Sport NZ directly contradicts itself by promoting inclusion for all but on the other hand promotes various individual identities over others. What we have seen in the last 24 months is the disconnect of Sport NZ from sport, the NZOC and HPSNZ.

Sport NZ has become more centred around socio politics than promoting competition sports. They have not performed for many sports, especially regarding promoting the participation of NZ sports for the up and coming Tokyo Olympics.

There is now a last-minute rush to secure MIQ spots for our athletes post Olympics thanks to their tardiness.

Sport NZ is not fulfilling its role in promoting sport and must be bought to task.

I now have the annual investment criteria to sort out to keep the feeble funding we receive.

Once more a great proportion of this requirement centres around political machinations.

Sport NZ now has a new leader, Rayleen Castle. Boxing NZ will be seeking a meeting with her soon to discuss failings on their behalf that have affected our sport. Hopefully we may see some changes away from the present.

The future of AOB boxing in NZ

As you can see from all the above these are very complicated times and our sport must move with the times to survive.

Due to the IOC not recognising AIBA as an Olympic beneficiary, they have withheld Olympic solidarity funding. Boxing NZ would normally benefit approximately $100,000 per annum from this payout.  Also, the TAB funding has virtually dried up so, financially, we have little to commit to developing boxing. We need a plan to survive.

We believe the focus of Boxing NZ is to raise the public profile of our sport, increase participation and develop income streams that will benefit the youth of our sport.

The first part of this has been to invest our resources into building profile via producing live streaming and commentary that can go out to the public. The NZ Sports Collective and Sky Sport have played a big role in this.

As you all will be aware we are in a building process that will determine how we will exist in the future and exposure from Sky Sport Next and of course Sky Sport Live has proven there is a captive audience out there and I am sure we can build on this with further promotion.

The proof of viewer numbers and their personal demographics is a very good tool for the possibility of future sponsorship.

The proof of numbers may also make Sport NZ sit up and take notice and recognise us for what we really are. We are a community asset that plays a big role in giving to youth, especially youth from the lower socio economic communities, a chance to change their lives for the better.

The feedback from members, especially our youth, has been extremely positive. They are very excited to see their sport out there for their whanau and the public to see. If we can keep forward momentum with this then who knows where we can go.

Manny Phol and Isaac Savage are our go-to guys for building a communication channel to our youth as well as other duties. In time we should see our younger members more involved in the direction of our sport through their work.

On the last census (2018) we have provided proof of over 10,000 participants in Boxing NZ accredited gyms and clubs. The story we still have to sell is that even though we have 700-plus competition athletes, we have thousands of other affiliate members. (Sorry to hit you guys with this but we are designing two more censuses relating to the investment criteria requirements. One will be a member satisfaction census and the other a participation census. We will need your help to get the feedback and numbers).

The position we are in now is that we may have created a monster within, while we were thrilled to see the numbers of viewers exceeded expectations (and I believe we can increase these numbers exponentially with further exposure) we have to look at the financial cost of production.

The Golden Gloves cost approximately $10,500 for two days to employ AVP to do the production and $17,500 for the New Zealand Championships in Wellington.

We had $7500 from Sky Sport to contribute to production and we were very grateful to the Wellington-Hutt Valley Boxing Association assisting us to pay the bill for the nationals.

However, we cannot burden future associations wishing to hold the New Zealand Championships or Golden Gloves with the large financial cost of television production so I am relying on the Sports Collective to do its job and get the required funding from SKY.

Out of interest we had over 51,000 views for the National Championships.

A consulting company from the USA has collated the data from viewership and given us some interesting data that will hopefully assist with finding a suitable sponsor for the next major event.

Referees, judges and supervisors

Recently we completed and qualified people to be accredited supervisors at tournaments throughout New Zealand.  We had 30-plus people participate in the accreditation process and they are now accredited.

Every tournament should/must have one of these persons as supervisor for the event. The office will send out the names and their contacts to all associations so that when they request for a permit they will name the supervisor as well as referees and judges for the event.

We now have another urgent matter that must be dealt with and that is getting more referees and judges accredited.  It was noticeable last year that when we called for R/J’s for our nationals that we had a very small number who put their names forward for consideration.  Many associations are now struggling to get officials for tournaments and we have noticed that some who have been the mainstay for associations have either retired or are reaching that stage.

We call on all associations to encourage people in their area who have a desire to be involved in our sport to put their names forward to become referees or judges. We will hold training sessions around the country when we have sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile or we will hold virtual meetings which will keep costs down.

We are all aware that without officials, tournaments will not happen and that would be a disaster for our athletes.

Boxing NZ has agreed that coaches may become qualified R&J’s and officiate at tournaments. Coaches have moaned for years about judging results so here’s a good chance to do something about it. If there is no interest in coaches becoming judging then don’t come to us moaning about future results when an opportunity has been given to make a difference.

Take care all

Steve Hartley

President

Boxing New Zealand