Boxer secures Tuvalu’s first Commonwealth Games medal without winning a bout

A boxer has made history for ⁠Tuvalu by winning the tiny Pacific island nation’s first Commonwealth ⁠Games medal without winning a single fight.

Twenty-year-old Tarona Taafaki, ⁠one of five entrants in the women’s 75kg category, received a bye to the semi-finals where she lost on an unanimous points decision to India’s Lovlina Borgohain on Friday. At Commonwealth Games, all boxers eliminated in the semis receive bronze medals.

“I’m very proud and very glad to be able to represent my country on this big stage,” said Taafaki, one of only eight athletes and paraathletes from her country 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, said the medal would be celebrated by the 10,000 population of the 10square-mile nation – the world’s fourth smallest – and serve to highlight a climate emergency.

“For the people of Tuvalu, this medal means everything,” he said. “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 often train on the island’s airport runway as it is its most stable land mass. However, with sea levels rising, climate experts predict half of the nation’s capital, Funafuti, could be submerged by 2050. “Yes, we train on the runway,” said 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 also boxed in the Commonwealth Games, are based in New Zealand where the facilities are better. “When I was growing up, boxing barely existed in Tuvalu,” said 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 is not the first boxer to win a Commonwealth Games medal without winning a fight. Australia’s Taylah Robertson picked up a bronze in the women’s flyweight category on the Gold Coast in 2018 despite losing her first bout to England’s Lisa Whiteside.