SA boxers aim for Olympic glory
23 July 2004
Three boxers - featherweight Ludumo Galada, lightweight Bongani Mahlangu and middleweight Khotso Motau - will be pulling on the gloves in Athens in an attempt to win South Africa's first Olympic boxing medal since Daniel Bekker's heavyweight silver at the 1960 Games in Rome.
According to coach Andile Mufo, SA's boxing trio is "going to surprise a lot of South Africans - and return with at least one medal from the Olympic Games".
Ludumo Galada
Ludumo Galada, a featherweight from the Eastern Cape, qualified for South Africa's Olympic squad at the African Boxing Confederation Championships in Botswana in March.
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Galada won his preliminary fight against a boxer from Morocco, defeated a Swazi fighter in the quarterfinals, and won a gruelling semifinal encounter with a Cameroonian boxer before losing to Botswana's Khumiso Ikgopoleng in the final.
"It was an incredibly close fight", South African coach Andile Mufo said of the final. "It went the distance of four rounds, and the difference was three points."
Khotso Motau
Middleweight boxer Khotso Motau has more than 200 fights under his belt, with only six losses, in an amateur career that stretches back to 1991.
Motau made the Olympic grade with a title-winning performance at a qualifying tournament in Morocco in January.
In a
recent interview with the Sunday Times, the 22-year-old said that in Soweto, where he grew up, the main choices facing youngsters at the time were crime and hooliganism - or sport.
So he joined the Dube club - whose most famous product is Baby Jake Matlala - to ensure that his unemployed mom, Gloria, wouldn't worry about him.
"I'm thankful I grew up in the gyms and not on the streets", Motau told the Sunday Times. "Where I come from, life can turn bad on the streets."
Bongani Mahlangu
Bongani Mahlangu, a lightweight campaigner from Boipatong in the Vaal Triangle, qualified for Athens at the All-Africa Games in Nigeria last year.
But he still can't believe that he's headed for the world's greatest multi-sport showpiece. "I'll believe it when I'm on the plane", says Mahlangu, whose gym for the past year has been a double garage in Vanderbijlpark. "I've never been given any favours."
The three boxers are part of the
National Olympic Committee of SA's Operation Excellence programme, which provides the country's top Olympic contenders with financial and technical support in the four-year period between the Games.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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