Hafeez Khan is a diminutive, animated busybody who has never graced a boxing ring in his life. He is, however, a vociferous advocate of amateur boxing, a sport which he says “deserves far more attention and official support” than it has ever gotten.
Two years ago he was elected to the presidency of the Guyana Amateur Boxing Association (GABA), an assignment which he evidently relishes but one which has provided him with painful insights into the drudgery of administering a sport afflicted by a chronic scarcity of resources.
His advocacy of the sport, he says, derives from the fact that “boxing has given Guyana more than what it has received in return”. He notes that while boxing has given Guyana quite a few world champions in recent years the sport still thrives mostly on handouts, and sponsorships from the business community which are not nearly enough to keep the game going. “We have consistently produced some of the best amateur boxers in the Caribbean; and we probably have one of the best recent records among the minor countries in international boxing for producing world champions. I believe that the sport has earned far more than it has gotten.”
Boxing, he points out, is the preferred sport of working class young men who invariably bring to the game little more than a passion to do well. And even that passion is frequently compromised by a lack of discipline and the need to make a living. In that context he believes that the sport can play an important role, that it can serve as a worthwhile pursuit to constructively channel energies that might otherwise be misdirected.
The circumstances, Khan says, make his presidency of GABA an arduous task. To finance local events and participation in overseas tournaments the GABA relies heavily on the patronage of “friends in the business community.” Raising funds and seeking favours, he says, detracts from the wider responsibilities of his presidency of GABA.
While he believes that his job is “to move the institution of the sport forward” he bemoans the fact that he must constantly immerse himself in issues that ought correctly to be left to the boxers and their coaches. Discipline, he says, is a challenge. Talent is not always attended by dedication. Boxers have been known to be less than attentive to their training and coaches are far from sufficiently well-compensated to assume the role of social “minder” to their charges.
“Moving the sport forward” is an arduous task. It requires administrative skills and a capacity to engage in the kind of influence-peddling in the absence of which the sport simply cannot survive. Boxing, like most other sports in Guyana, is afflicted by an acute deficiency of official attention. What this means is that plans to take teams to overseas events, whether goodwill visits or important regional and international games must factor in the increasingly difficult task of finding the money to meet costs associated with those trips. The situation has become so dire that selection for participation in overseas events is no guarantee of participation. Boxers selected to participate in overseas events are invariably required to seek out sponsorship to meet at least part of the cost of their travel and other expenses.
Khan believes that at a time when sport has become a virtual extension of foreign policies of developed countries, the cap-in-hand status of local amateur boxing injures both the standard of local amateur boxing and the image of sport in Guyana. He says that while he is not insensitive to the limits to which the state can finance the game he believes that more can be done by government to help the sport. In this regard he expresses an undisguised disappointment over deficiencies in the quality of the communication between GABA and the National Sports Development Council. (NSDC) He complains that communication with NSDC regarding more support for amateur boxing has received no response. He estimates that it would take approximately $4m annually to enable GABA to run six tournaments annually and to pay for boxers’ participation in overseas events. “If we were to receive $2m a year from government we can manage,” Khan says.
But that is by no means the whole story. Khan says that the funding that GABA seeks takes no account of the run-down state of local boxing infrastructure. Khan says that he has been able, through the support of the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA), to add ten gyms to the ten that had already been established when he took over the presidency of GABA two years ago. These, however, are seriously underdeveloped facilities that are in need of considerable upgrading.
The responsibilities that attend Khan’s role as president of GABA sometimes extends into various mundane pursuits………… like personally meeting the cost of transport for boxers travelling in Guyana in a case where, he says, the NSDC withdrew a commitment to make its bus available, pressing his wife into service to provide meals for boxers and finding accommodation for boxers. “Some-times they stay at the Gymnasium but I have to get on my knees to seek permission to have them stay there. ”
Inevitably, Khan says, the presidency of GABA, impacts significantly on his personal life. “I have had differences of opinion with my family over the need to taking care of boxers who arrive in the city to participate in events with no money, no food and no sleeping bags.”
You get a sense that Khan is by no means the most popular sports administrator with the state sports body, a truism which he does little to conceal. He believes that his presidency of GABA is far from popular with the NSDC pointing to what he says was the snubbing by its officials of a recent major presentation ceremony which he organized for local amateur boxers.
Enhancing the proficiency of local amateur boxers, Khan says, also necessitates extending invitations to overseas teams to compete here. “Unfortunately, while some of the best amateur boxers in the world are to be found in this very hemisphere, in countries like Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia the local association does not have the funds to afford such invitations. It is a costly exercise that includes funding the accommodation and meals and training facilities for the visiting boxers and the truth is that what we have to offer is simply not attractive enough to attract world class amateur teams. “Unless we can get the backing of the government to extend those invitations we are really not in a position to do so.”
Khan is hard-pressed to properly evaluate the state of the game in Guyana. He says that while “the talent is there,” progress is constrained mostly by finances and facilities but by other circumstances as well. He points out that Guyana, like other developing countries, has had to face the hurdle of far stricter post-9/11 United States visa requirements, a constraint that hinders optimum participation in international amateur boxing tournaments. “You can select a team for an international tournament with no idea whatsoever of who will eventually travel until you clear the US visa hurdle.”
Khan’s ‘take’ on the visa problem can hardly be blunder. “The reality of the situation is that any Guyanese athlete – whether in boxing or any other sport – who travels to a developed country and sees opportunities to develop his or her capabilities in the sport and to enhance the quality of their lives will probably be tempted not to return. To get a visa for a boxer to travel to the United States, therefore, is no easy matter.”
Serious doubts exist about participation by Guyanese boxers in the Beijing Olympics. Few local boxers have met the desired standard for participation and the recent Trinidad and Tobago pre-Olympics “box-off” which included boxers from traditionally “strong countries” including Cuba may have all but closed the door to that possibility.
When you ask Hafeez Khan about his own future with GABA he becomes less talkative, more reflective. His response suggests that he is not yet ready to give up his mission to take amateur boxing forward. You get the feeling, however, that thoughts of a second term as the main man in local amateur boxing are very much tempered by the challenges that he has had to face during his first two-year term in office.
