Earlier this week, the Sports Authority of India (SAI) ended the assessment system at national camps to select boxers and instead asked the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) to conduct trial bouts. The SAI intervention came after boxers complained about alleged lack of transparency. At the end of the three-day trials for the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games at the National Institute of Sport in Patiala, the Indian women’s team head coach Santiago Nieva told The Indian Express that it was “too demanding psychologically and physically” for boxers to go for trials every time they have to compete.
In your earlier stint as High Performance Director, you had spoken about the need for assessment-based selection…
We had the Asian Championships recently, where the top performers have proven themselves. So why expose them to trials and interrupt their preparation? So, we did a hybrid system where the five boxers who reached the finals at the Asian Championships were selected for the Commonwealth and Asian Games and those who didn’t had to prove themselves through trial bouts. But it’s too demanding psychologically and physically to go for trials every time you have to compete.
Some boxers have complained that selection should be based on trials and not the assessment. How do you see this?
Nikhat (Zareen) got the trial against Mary Kom in the past. Sometimes, trials are required, but not all the time. You have to take into account more parameters than just one bout. So some of the 3-2 decisions in today’s bouts can be 2-3 tomorrow. But you don’t get the chance to take that into account when there are trial bouts. If you do an overall assessment, you look at how the training is going, at injuries, weight management, previous international results, and who has better chances overall. Of course, it’s a little bit subjective but this is more than just a bout of three rounds. There is more to a selection than who has done best for nine minutes during trial bouts.
You coached Sweden and Argentina before joining India in 2017, and then coached Australia. What are the positives of the assessment system?
The traditional way is having a selection event, a national championship, or a selection trial. Selecting the winners of a selection trial has been going on for 50 years. But when teams started training together more full-time, especially in the former communist bloc, those countries took other parameters into account because they saw the boxers train every day. So they gave either the head coach or the selection panel the freedom to pick the boxers. So, the coach does an overall assessment. And this assessment system that we were using, comes from English-speaking countries… to try to put some more objective parameters into it.
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So can we say assessment is your preferred method to select boxers?
They use it in Canada, USA, England, Ireland. We tried it in Australia. In most countries, you respect it. If you have a head coach, that person should be able to select a team. When I was head coach in Sweden, they had the policy that we have appointed this person. If that person cannot select the team, he cannot be the head coach. So if you give the responsibility to the head coach, we give him the freedom to pick the team. How do you do it in football? In Argentina, if the head coach wants Lionel Messi, he doesn’t have to give any justification. This is the team he wants. If he wants to replace him after 65 minutes, he can replace him with any other player. It’s the coach’s decision. So, if you ask me, that is my preferred method. But I know it’s not possible in India.
Do you see the trials as fool-proof?
I inherited the assessment from the previous coaching system. It’s better to stick with what we have used for some years. The federation thought it was good. The coaches thought it was good. So I said, ‘let’s try it’. But then SAI had some objections. So the way to select the team may not necessarily be what gives you the medal. For the Tokyo Olympics, we had selection trials. The only ones who were exempted were those who won medals at the men’s World Championships. Every time you have a selection trial, you cannot travel anywhere before and just after. You have to come back home. Now, we miss out on the World Cup. Everybody’s asking why we didn’t go to the World Cup in Brazil? How can we go? We needed to come back for the trials. So, the less time you spend on selection trials, the more time you have for the best preparation.
What are the chances for Indian women boxers in the LA Olympics cycle?
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Those who have won gold and silver at the Asian Championships, at this point, they are our strongest boxers. But from here to the Olympics, a lot can change. We want to have a big number of qualified boxers so our chances of medals increase. The Olympic qualifiers are tough.
