Indian boxers who excel at major international events like the Asian Games could be rewarded with direct entry to the Olympic qualifiers, with women's head coach Santiago Nieva favouring a performance-based selection system over frequent trials.
The Boxing Federation of India (BFI) was forced to swap its selection assessment, which evaluated boxers on multiple parameters, for the traditional trial based system for this year's Commonwealth Games and Asian Games after the Sports Authority of India (SAI) received several complaints.
The squads for the two multi-sport events were finalised on Friday following a three-day selection trial, while some boxers already secured their berths through medal-winning performances at last month's Asian Championships.
"Now we have the opportunity to select based on international results. The less time we spend on selection trials, the better," Nieva told PTI.
The Argentina-born Swedish coach said the Asian Championships model, where finalists earned direct qualification for the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, could possibly become a template for future selections.
"Like we did at the Asian Championships, those who reached the final automatically qualified (CWG, Asian Games). We could do something similar for the Asian Games and other competitions leading up to the first Olympic qualifier.
"If somebody wins gold or silver or whatever, then they could potentially qualify directly for the World Championships, which is the first Olympic qualifier.
"That way we free up around five months of preparation time where we can choose which competitions and training camps to attend instead of being tied down because of repeated selections," he added.
The next two years are expected to be crucial for Indian boxing with four Olympic qualifying events lined up for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Two of those events -- the World Boxing Championships in Kazakhstan and the Asian Qualifiers -- are scheduled for 2027, followed by two World Qualifiers in 2028.
Nieva said conducting selection trials before every major event leaves little room for meaningful preparation.
"We should look at doing something similar in the future because imagine if there are four Olympic qualifiers and you have to come back in between every one of them and do another selection trial. You can never prepare properly for international competitions that way," he said.
Nieva, who also served as Indian boxing's High Performance Director from 2017 to 2022, reiterated that he is not in favour of trial-based selection.
"For me, there are different ways to select the team. We want the best boxers and we need to make sure that we select the best boxers. When I came in 2017 one of the first things we did was changing the selection trials.
"The habit of doing selection trials for every single competition I don't think that's a good system. It's an old-school system. Sometimes it can be useful but as the only way to select a team I would say not good enough," he said.
The administrative tussle between the BFI and SAI had also led to the national camp being delayed and briefly suspended.
The assessment process was abandoned midway after the initial phase of strength and conditioning tests, with the scores eventually declared null and void.
Talking about the controversy, Nieva admitted the matter could have been managed better.
"I don't know all the ins and outs. I'm sure it could have been handled better," he said.
Nieva and men's head coach CA Kuttappa had travelled to Delhi earlier this week to meet SAI officials and push for the resumption of the camp by proposing a return to the traditional trial system.
He said the move was the most practical solution given the limited time available before the upcoming competitions.
"But the reality was we had to solve it the best way possible and we went to a meeting with SAI and we had a good meeting and in the end we could go ahead with the selection.
"We now have to work together with SAI and make sure that we get a fair system which we are happy with," he added.
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