Team Philippines earned fantastic five Olympic quotas for Paris, the highest number since 1996
Team Philippines earned fantastic number of five boxing quotas for the Paris Olympics through the three qualification events which hosted by the cities of Hangzhou, Busto Arsizio and Bangkok.
The Philippines has currently 15 licenses for the Olympic Games in athletics, boxing, fencing, gymnastics, rowing and weightlifting. Among them boxing is the most successful sport for the Paris Olympics qualifications with five quotas.
Philippines competed first in the Paris 1924 Olympic Games but in different sports but the country was also one of the pioneer boxing nations in Asia. Philippines was one of the first Asian nations which attended in the boxing event of the Olympic Games, their debut has done in the Los Angeles 1932 edition.
The Filipino boxers competed and qualified into 19 editions of the Olympic Games between 1932 and 2016. Since the qualification procedure has been established before the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games, Philippines’ best boxers qualified to each of the Games to Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro.
Their peak presence in the Olympic Games was at the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games with six boxers which the country repeated in Seoul in 1988 and in Barcelona four years later.
Philippines had four qualified boxers at the Tokyo Olympics which is their best ever Games of all-times in our sport. Their female and male boxers claimed two silver and one bronze medal in Japan’s capital three years ago.
Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam were their silver medallists in the Tokyo Olympics, while Eumir Felix Marcial bagged the bronze in 2021. All of them have qualified for the Paris Olympics through the three different competitions in the previous months. Paalam had to catch one of the last available tickets to Paris at the 2nd World Olympic Boxing Qualifying Event in Bangkok. Aira Villegas is a new ace in their Olympic team but she has twelve years of experience in the international competitions and the technician boxer will represent the Philippines at the women’s light flyweight (50kg). Hergie Bacyadan switched from other martial arts to boxing in time to qualify for Paris at the women’s middleweight (75kg).
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