IRELAND can have more than one boxer at next year’s Beijing Olympics, insists high performance director Gary Keegan, but he admitted next spring’s qualifiers in Italy and Greece could be more difficult than the World Championships.

World and three times European lightweight (60Kg) champion Katie Taylor claimed yet another victory after stopping Canadian Katie Dunn at the University of Illinois in Chicago last night.

IRISH boxing officials were yesterday mulling over the shock defeat of Darren Sutherland at the World Championships in Chicago, where their favourite for Olympic qualification went out to Alfonso Blanco (Venezuela) at the wrong end of a shock 20-13 decision.

There was double disappointment for Irish boxers in the early hours of this morning after Darren Sutherland and John Sweeney bowed out of the 2007 AIBA World Championships and Olympic qualifiers at the last 16 stage at the University of Chicago in Illinois.

A RECENT haircut helps accentuate the gaunt features and steely eyes of a man who might have been to hell and back — and is prepared to go the route again.

KENNETH EGAN and welterweight Roy Sheahan are safely through their respective preliminaries and now Darren Sutherland can lead them into the last 16 — just one fight away from Olympic qualification — when he takes on Andranik Hakobyan (Armenia) in what will be his first bout at the world boxing championships in Chicago today.