Boxer secures Tuvalu’s first Commonwealth Games medal with out successful a bout | Commonwealth Games 2026

A boxer has made historical past for ⁠Tuvalu by successful the tiny Pacific island nation’s first Commonwealth ⁠Games medal with out successful a single combat.

Twenty-year-old Tarona Taafaki, ⁠one among 5 entrants within the girls’s 75kg class, obtained a bye to the semi-finals the place she misplaced on an unanimous factors determination to India’s Lovlina Borgohain on Friday. At Commonwealth Games, all boxers eradicated within the semis obtain bronze medals.

“I’m very proud and very glad to be able to represent my country on this big stage,” stated Taafaki, one among solely eight athletes and paraathletes from her nation in Glasgow. “Probably 95% of the audience don’t know where my country is, so I feel very privileged to represent Tuvalu.”

Badi Taafaki, her coach and father, stated the medal could be celebrated by the ten,000 inhabitants of the ten sq mile nation – the world’s fourth smallest – and serve to focus on a local weather emergency.

“For the people of Tuvalu, this medal means everything,” he stated. “We’re one of the smallest nations in the world, so a medal like this is hugely significant. We have worked so hard to get here. For me as a coach, it’s a stepping stone.”

Athletes typically practice on the island’s airport runway as it’s its most secure land mass. However, with sea ranges rising, local weather specialists predict half of the nation’s capital, Funafuti, could possibly be submerged by 2050. “Yes, we train on the runway,” stated Taafaki. “When a plane comes in, everyone moves aside. As soon as it leaves, we go back on the tarmac, because there is nowhere else to train.”

However, Tarona and her brother Pasoni, who additionally boxed within the Commonwealth Games, are primarily based in New Zealand the place the services are higher. “When I was growing up, boxing barely existed in Tuvalu,” stated Badi. “We didn’t have gloves, so we were forced to fight bare-knuckle, and hit bags filled with sand. My children are very fortunate. They have opportunities and facilities that I never had. Boxing is our whole life. Strength is in our bloodline. It’s where our genealogy comes from.

“If we can win medals, more people around the world will recognise Tuvalu and begin to understand the challenges we face because of climate change. It is very real for us. The coastal erosion is unbelievable, and the countdown is now measured in years, not decades.

“Some islands have lost half their land. At high tide the sea comes right through. People living on the coast can’t sleep if there’s a storm, because the waves can come straight through their homes.”

Taafaki isn’t the primary boxer to win a Commonwealth Games medal with out successful a combat. Australia’s Taylah Robertson picked up a bronze within the girls’s flyweight class on the Gold Coast in 2018 regardless of dropping her first bout to England’s Lisa Whiteside.