CHENNAI: Five boxers, zero medals. To add to that, Indian male pugilists could only manage a single victory courtesy Satish Kumar during the Tokyo Olympics. While it was a Games to remember for the country, it was a forgetful one for the men.
The dust is yet to settle and Santiago Nieva, India men's high performance director, has been trying to assess India's performance. The Argentina-born Swede, who has been at the helm of affairs since 2017, is unable to pinpoint why his wards were unable to produce what they are capable of. Tried and tested methods that had brought success in the past Championships did not work, according to him.
Not deflecting from India's forgettable show, one also has to take a glance at other more-fancied countries who struggled. The level of competition was something that surprised many. Take the case of Uzbekistan, who had won seven medals (7 G, 2 S, 2 B) in the Rio Olympics. This time they had a lone medallist, the boxer who beat Satish went on to fetch gold. It's the same story with Kazakhstan, who had four medals (including 1 gold) in Rio. They could just manage two bronze. After the Rio debacle, where just three boxers had qualified, India had done well to have nine representatives (including women) in Tokyo.
Talking to this daily, Nieva spoke about digging deeper and coming up with better solutions ahead of the World Championships (later this year) and the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games (both in 2022). A member of AIBA Coaches Committee, Nieva also spoke about judging — which has been under intense scrutiny — and how better technology could improve the same in the near future. Excerpts...
Your thoughts on boxers' Tokyo performance
We are still in that process (assessment). We have to constantly evaluate and see what we can do to improve. Obviously, the Olympic results were far from what we hoped for. We have to look even deeper into what we could have done and where we need to improve. At the same time, there are no magical solutions. You have to put in hard quality work, and we have done that. I have had discussions with the other coaches, we have not done anything different from other times when we did find success. There's no red line where we can pinpoint and say where our boxers failed. As far as I can see, there were different reasons why each couldn't box at the highest level. So it's difficult to make a conclusion. We have to stay positive and see what we can do to improve and I believe in continuous improvement of the system that we are building. It's the only way to get success. When I came here, I said that I believe that Great Britain adopted and now you can see the results today. That's something that we want to try and emulate and do better if we can.
On tried & tested methods failing to work
We had seven major Championships (including World Championships) in build-up to the Olympics and we had done well then. It was good to very good to very successful. We had ticked all the boxes. We had done something right. We had won medals in two consecutive Asiad, World Championships and we had five quotas, so we had set all the conditions you would think for a good performance at the Olympics. But this is not mathematics. I'm sure countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Thailand are in the same process as we are. They expected more and they got much less than expected.
On Amit failing to live up to billing
Amit had a good camp in Italy and had done well in every sparring session except against the Colombian boxer. It was not just Amit who had problems against him, everybody else was finding it very tough. So we knew he was a tough opponent. If you ask me today, maybe I could do things differently... I'd obviously try different tactics, maybe move less and try to box him differently. However, if you ask me if that would guarantee a different result, I wouldn't be able to tell.
On contract extension & future
We are looking forward to the World Championships (in October-November) this year and next year we'll have CWG and Asiad in a short span of time. We have to re- focus on those events. We have to bring in new boxers for certain weight categories. We still don't know which categories will be there at CWG and Asiad. We will have a camp and have trials and pick a team for the Worlds. I have a contract until September 30. That is something we have to look at with BFI and SAI. My intention is to continue and hopefully we can reach forward to an agreement and we can look forward to 2024.
On the sport being under scrutiny, especially judging
The last few days (semifinals and finals) was very positive. The final impression was much better than what it was looking at midway. Obviously, we have to come up with a better system to judge the bout. As things stand, it's too subjective and we need to bring in some technology. From what I hear, we are pretty close to coming up with a good system that will be much more objective. People blame the judges but it's not black and white. The system we have to judge the bout is very old. Being part of the AIBA coaches committee, we have been giving our recommendations on what rule changes we want. I think most of us from the committee are in favour of a change in the judging system, but the issue is how we come up with a better system. We need good enough technology so that the system is considerably better.