• Submitted by: manso
• Sports
• 06 / 02 / 2011

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By: Ruth.09:06.Havana, Jun 1 (Prensa Latina) The 41st Giraldo Cordova Cardin Memorial International Boxing Tournament begins Wednesday with about 100 athletes from 14 countries.

Havana's Ramon Fonst Multipurpose Hall is the venue for this event, where Cuba's best boxers will be in action, including 10 who will participate in the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara.

The best-known foreign athletes are middleweight Vijender Kumar of India, bronze medalist in the Olympics and in the world chmpionship, a polished talent thanks to Cuban cooperation in the Asian country, and Salomo Ntuve (52 kg) of Sweden, European runner-up in 2008.

The others, who competed in Beijing 2008,are Brazilians Mike Carvalho (69 kg) and Everton Lopez (64),and Dominican Roberto Navarro (60), Pan American champion.

Carvalho defeated Carlos Banteur, the summer games runner-up, in the qualifying round in Ecuador, and the Cuban will have a chance to make up for that if they compete again.

Organizers will place local fighters in the same groups of the competition schedule, which will ensure the presence of an international boxer in every fight for the gold.

However, not even this strategy allowed visitors to take a prize in the last edition, and the last one to do so was middleweight Alfonso Blanco of Venezuela, the only foreign champion in the 2009 tournament.

In the same Hall the Roberto Balado International Tournament will take place from 8 to 12, with fighters from Australia, Argentina, Mozambique and probably Venezuela, Peru and the Bahamas.