Mr. Lai Pak Leng – All of our members are volunteers but we have got strategic plans to develop boxing in Macau

Mr. Lai Pak Leng is the President of the Macau Boxing Association who answered all of the questions of the management of the Asian Boxing Confederation about their boxing life, future developments and their history. Macau is a small country in the Eastern Asian region but their boxers competed in several international competitions in the recent one decade.
Mr. Billy Vong Kuok Veng is Macau’s famous ITO who has been supporting the world’s biggest competitions with his experiences. Macau is planning to find a foreign coach who could be working in full time to train their young talents and cooperation with their professional boxers are also among their strategic plans.

– Could you please introduce your country’s boxing life?
– Macau Boxing Association was established in 1995 and is official recognized by Macau Sport Development and Macau IOC. Our best results are: bronze medals in the 2001 East Asian Games (elite men), 2004 Asian Cadet Boxing Championship, 2005 Asian Women’s Boxing Championship and in the 2009 Asian Indoor Games in Vietnam.
Macau is part of China and a small city located in the Southern part of China with about six hundred thousands population only, which means we have got not enough chance to recruit boxers in our tiny region. Compared with other sports, combat sports are not popular in Macau and difficult to attach newcomers to participate because of injury consideration is in common mind in our society.
All of our coaches, boxers and staff are part timers, students and volunteers. Recently in all over the world, most of the boxers and their training staff are full time and professional. Compared to our situation, we are facing many challenges and difficulties to get good results in any boxing tournaments.
However, we still try our best alternatives to develop our boxing to the Macau society such as purchasing our own boxing training venue, sending boxers to training camp in holiday and encourage and support coaches, referees and officials to study in various AIBA courses and international events.

– Would you like to tell us your strategic plans for the future and the key developments in your country?
– Supported by Sports Bureau of Macau and association management, a development plan for the upcoming years are the followings:
1) Cooperate with and supported by Sports Bureau of Macau, organize boxing training activities for high school and university students every summer holidays.
2) Recruit fulltime foreign experienced coach in order to improve boxer’s skills.
3) Cooperate with more experienced Macau professional boxers to represent Macau and participate in some important AOB events.
4) Try to allow our boxers to participate smaller tournaments to let our boxes to gain more competition experiences.
5) Send boxers to training camp in every summer holiday regularly.
6) Organize boxing training course in evening time to attract more youth to participate in boxing activities continually.

– What are the main strengths and issues in your boxing life?
– 1) Since Macau is still under amateur training, we are now target our boxers to make skill improvement and earning experience through participating in suitable level tournament. So we do not have too much pressure in getting medal or not during in the competitions.
2) Our Sports Bureau of Macau and IOC are willing to provide subsidy and support in sports.
3) We have good relationship with other federations so that we can have more opportunities to have some exchange boxing activities.
4) Recent years, many boxing events hosted by Macau Casinos. It is advantage to Macau citizens to be more understood and interested in boxing activities.