Angie Valdés, Colombian boxer, got the country’s 28th ticket to Paris 2024.
Photo: Colombian Olympic Committee
The countdown to the Olympic Games faces its last phase. With 50 days left until the torch is lit in Paris, Colombia begins to observe in detail the athletes with whom it will attend the big event. The Colombian Olympic Committee continues to aspire to a number of around 100 athletes, although at the moment the list of qualifiers is barely reaching 70 places.
Among those who already have a ticket to the Paris 2024 Olympics, boxing is one of the sports that has already defined all the participants that will feed the national delegation. Last weekend, at the Pre-Olympic Championships held in Bangkok, Colombia ruled out its last options to expand the team that will go to France, after the eight boxers with whom it attended Thailand did not qualify. Finally, the national team will go to the tournament with the five boxers.
The negative note is the low male presence, well only Yílmar González, classified in the 57 kilograms, will go to the Games. Since Moscow, in 1980, when it did not take one, Colombia has not put so few men into the Olympic ring. However, despite the low statistics in men, women stood out with four qualifiers, a record number for Colombian boxing. Íngrit Valencia, the first national boxer to qualify for the joust (in Rio 2016)will be alongside another experienced player like Yeni Arias and two rookies: Valeria Arboleda and Angie Valdés.
Angie Valdés, world runner-up.
Photo: IBA
The Barranquilla Valdés, precisely, is one of the main cards to get on the Paris 2024 podium for the Colombian delegation. With the 28th place, she secured her place in the Olympics at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, an event to which she had arrived as current runner-up in the world. That label was already enough to ensure her classification. However, the problems of the International Boxing Federation with the International Olympic Committee, which has her under scrutiny for investigations related to the manipulation of results, forced the Colombian, like the rest of the world’s boxers, to seek her Olympic classification. through other windows.
In conversation with this newspaper, Valdés explained that the Olympic dream is one of the reasons why he started boxing.. He used to be an athlete, but one day while accompanying his sister to training, he fell in love with the ring and began to get excited about going to the most important competitions in the world: “I saw them from afar and said: ‘Hey, cool.’ As I began to compete and won championships at the national level, I was excited to think that I could go to a world championship or the Olympics.”
Angie Paola Valdés, a reference in Colombian boxing.
Angie Valdés burst onto the scene in this Olympic cycle. “She is a candidate to fight for the podium. It is no surprise, she comes from being a champion in the Bolivarian Games and the South American Games. She won silver in the Pan American Games and in the World Cup, competitions in which she lost to the great candidate for gold. She still has many things to improve and we are working on them ahead of Paris to fight,” said Colombia coach Rafael Iznaga.
Following the example of those she considers her idols, Íngrit Valencia and Yeni Arias (world runner-up who is also a medal candidate), Angie Valdés aspires to make history in Paris. “She wanted to be like them,” explains the Barranquilla woman, who could become the second Colombian woman to win a medal at the Olympic event. It is her great objective to follow the legacy of those who preceded her and write her name in golden letters in the history of Colombian sports.
