Egan, Sutherland head Irish challenge

THE five-man Irish boxing team will break camp in Manila today and head for Mianyang City in China for the world boxing championships which get under way on Sunday.

The five boxers have been at a training camp in the Philippines since November 2 preparing with some of the other top nations and, according to High Performance Director Gary Keegan, are in superb shape.

“We have been training here with Italy, Germany, France, Australia, the Philippines, Brazil and Sri Lanka,” he said. “It gave us an opportunity to spar with some boxers from those nations but, obviously, we were selective and only took part when it was beneficial to our lads.

“But I have to say the camp was excellent and the fact that it was at altitude is also very beneficial. We had plenty of opportunity to work out and we were able to see the boxers we might come up against over next week and that, too, was interesting.” The team is led by two members of the elite squad, light-heavyweight Kenneth Egan and middleweight Darren Sutherland. They are joined by three medallists from the recent multi-nations tournaments in Armenia and Helsinki: Athy featherweight, Eric Donovan, who won gold medals at both, Conor Ahern who won gold and silver and Roy Sheahan, also from Athy, who won a silver medal.

“I told them that if they won medals at those tournaments I would include them in the team for the world championships,” Gary Keegan said. “It was a pretty tall order at the time, but they did what was asked of them and they are deserving of their chance.”

Our last medallist at the world championships was James Moore, who has a couple of professional wins behind him. He won bronze at the worlds in Belfast in 2001 when Kenneth Egan made it to the quarter-finals. Egan is the most experienced member of the team and the Neilstown light-heavyweight won gold medals at all of his tournaments this year including the European Union championships.

“I would like to think that he has a chance of a medal out here, but so much depends on the luck of the draw at this level,” said Gary Keegan. “You get a good draw and you can go all the way but get a bad draw, against some of the leading contenders, and you could very well go out in the first round. For that reason we are keeping our fingers crossed.

“Everyone wants to do well at this tournament and all I can do is ask the boys to be competitive. If they do that I will be happy. Obviously, if we get a medal it will be really special.

“But we are looking further than those championships. The qualifying competitions for the Beijing Olympics will be getting under way in 22 months time. We have those guys here who will be in contention and we have a nice crop of young boxers coming along behind them.”

Darren Sutherland has been a revelation this year since coming back from injury. He is a student at DCU where Professor Niall Moyna, a brother-in-law of Olympic silver medallist John Treacy, has put a superb programme in place backed up by as good a sports medicine programme as one would find anywhere.

All the DCU athletes are benefiting but none more than Sutherland who was handed the task of filling the vacant middleweight berth when Andy Lee turned to the professional ranks.

The Dubliner has risen to the occasion, oozing confidence beyond his years and predicting that he will be in the shake-up in Mianyang given a bit of luck. “The draw is always going to be important but you are going to have to beat the best to be the best. I don’t think about who is in my division or anything like that. I leave that to the coaches and to Gary and they can tell me what to watch for. I like to do it that way. It means that I concentrate on my own performance.”