Former Minister of Youth and Sports, Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye, has opened up about why he quit boxing while in Senior High School (SHS).

According to his account, he participated in a youth boxing tournament but was knocked out in the quarterfinals after being beaten.

He also revealed that things were complicated for him as his SHS in Sunyani lacked boxing training facilities, and he had to go through several processes to get permission to leave the school premises for training.

Speaking in an interview on JoyNews, Nii Lante noted that the defeat he suffered, coupled with the infrastructural deficit in the country, compelled him to quit boxing and focus on football.

"I wasn't called because I lost in the quarterfinals. I met a better boxer from Accra and, in fact, I couldn't stand the beatings. When I went back to Sunyani in secondary school, I was going through a difficult time because I was in secondary school in a boarding house at Bechem.

"And I had to go to Sunyani for training. So it means that I always had to take an exeat to go for training because we didn't have a boxing gym in Bechem. So virtually what I was doing was the stamina work, the road work, and not doing my shadow boxing all the time on campus. So I could see that it was just fading off slowly. Infrastructural deficit was part. So I decided to divert more to football."

SB/EK