The Kenya Boxing team headed to the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games is in Nakuru are getting ready for the event to be held in Queensland, Australia from April 4 to 15.
The eleven man team plus their coaches, and team manager will leave Nakuru on 24 March after several weeks of intense training.
The team is training at the Nakuru Amateur Boxing Club. A total of twenty-two boxers are engaged in the training. Eleven will go to the games while the other eleven are their sparring partners.
The Team Manager, Mr. Albert Matito Ezekiel, said the eleven will consist of seven men and four women boxers. He was speaking to kna today at the boxing club.
“We expect to bring home several medals from the Commonwealth Games. The team has been extensively trained and we believe we have some of the best boxers,” says the coach.
“The Nakuru Amateur Boxing Club is one of the best in East and Central Africa. It’s centrally placed within the CBD, it has good facilities and the hotel where we’re booked is just a walking distance away,” says the coach.
The boxers are drawn from the KDF, Police Service, prison wardens some from the Coast and the rest from Nairobi County. Although they’re practicing in Nakuru, none of the boxers in the team resides in Nakuru.
According to the Club vice Chair Mwangi Muthoga, Nakuru has a rich history in Boxing as In the 1960s, Nakuru used to produce three-quarters of the Kenyan boxing team.
“We have a very rich legacy in boxing as Nakuru. Peter Waruinge, one of the best boxers Kenya has ever produced is a Nakuru son who won two Olympic medals out of the three games he participated in,” says the vice chair.
Peter Waruinge won bronze in Mexico in 1968 and Silver in Munich in 1972. Since then the club has not produced such sterling performance despite having the best training club. More often than not outsiders train at the club.
