Five invitational places have been awarded to countries for the boxing competitions at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the International Boxing Association (AIBA) have announced.
Athletes from Fiji, Jordan, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Zambia will be present among the 250 male boxers who are due to compete at the Games following a decision made by the Olympic Tripartite Commission.
Featuring input from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) and the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), the Commission is designed to provide smaller National Olympic Committees (NOCs) with the opportunity to compete at Olympic Games.
The places can only be offered to NOCs with an average of eight or fewer athletes in individual sports and disciplines at the previous two Olympic Games, and are subject to approval from the Commission and the International Boxing Association (AIBA).
Fiji are now set to return to Olympic boxing competition for the first time since Seoul 1988, with welterweight Winston Hill having been named as their representative.
Lionel Warawara will also end a 28-year wait for Vanuatu, as he has been selected by the country to compete in the bantamweight competition.
Papua New Guinea will be represented by lightweight Thadius Katua, while Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Benny Muziyo will compete for Zambia in the middleweight event.
The final place will see Obada Al-Kasbeh, a bronze medallist at the Incheon 2014 Asian Games, compete for Jordan in the light welterweight division.
He will be their second representative in boxing competition in Rio, with super heavyweight Hussein Ishaish having earned his place at the Asia & Oceania Qualification Tournament earlier this year in Qian'an, China.
The Games will see professional boxers compete at the Games for the first time, following a historic ruling, passed unanimously at AIBA’s Extraordinary Congress in Lausanne in June.
Amnat Ruenrong of Thailand and Cameroon’s Hassan N’Dam were the first two professionals to clinch places at the Games, with Italy’s Carmine Tommasone then becoming the third to qualify at the World Series of Boxing (WSB)/AIBA Pro Boxing (APB) Olympic Qualification Tournament last week in Vargas.
Last month AIBA confirmed that the Central African Republic, Federated States of Micronesia and Panama had been awarded invitational places for women’s competition.....