OYDC Director Clement Chileshe congratulates newly elected ZBF president

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By OYDC-Communications Officer Noah Silomba

Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) Director Clement Chileshe, says the Centre is looking forward to helping the newly elected Zambia Boxing Federation (ZBF) President Kennedy Mubita and his team in revamping boxing in the country.

Chileshe, congratulated the new ZBF President Mubita and his Vice President Lt. Col Jack Mbewe, saying he is hopeful that the new executive will work strategically to uplift the boxing standards adding that the Centre looked forward to seeing more young talented boxers qualifying and hopefully bring the country’s second Olympic boxing medal after the 1984 Keith Mwila bronze.

He notes that facilities for boxing at the OYDC haven’t been utilized well by ZBF. “We had good discussions with the former ZBF president and AIBA on how we can develop the OYDC into a national and regional High Performance Boxing Academy but we now need to implement the plan. We need to start now with intensive preps for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and other continental and world competitions such as the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

“I strongly believe we have the talent to bring medals at the world stage as Ben Muziyo has shown us despite returning without a medal from the Rio Games. AIBA has declared 2017 as the year for Africa and have targeted OYDC as the Center for capacity building of African coaches and officials. It is our hope that the camps for the top boxers in Africa will also be held at OYDC as this will benefit our boxers and coaches more. We struggle to find resources to send our boxers for training outside the country but hosting the African academy will definitely get more of our Zambian boxers exposed to higher level coaches from AIBA while our local coaches will learn and perform better. It is our hope that the private sector and other key stakeholders will come on board to help support our top boxers to participate in frequent competitions as that is the only way they can improve performance after receiving good and consistent training”.

And Chileshe says it is gratifying that the International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) has continued to support the development of boxing at the OYDC and the nation at large by contributing the state of the art boxing ring and boxing gloves. “We are still discussing with AIBA for more equipment to be provided to the OYDC”.

 

AIBA in 2016 donated the ring at the Centre which was delivered by TaiShan Sports for the national team use.

In November 2015, AIBA Director of Boxers Development Fabricio Leclercq, visited the OYDC and disclosed that his association had plans to make the OYDC as regional boxing training Centre.

With AIBA President Dr Ching-Kuo Wu’s move to announce that 2017 is “The Year of Africa” Chileshe, says this gives a better platform that the OYDC will host more coaching courses and AIBA programmes for Africa to benefit the coaches, boxers, teams and the national federation.

Newly elected ZBF president Kennedy Mubita, was at the weekend announced president during ZBF annual general meeting held at the Olympic Youth Development Centre.

Mubita, won the elections unopposed.

Speaking shortly after being declared winner Mubita, said his team will work with the OYDC management to ensure that clubs and teams affiliated to ZBF start utilising the sports facilities.

Meanwhile, Mubita announced that he had lifted the suspension of all its members and urged them to work with the newly elected executive.