Ireland joins hunt for 2011 championships

THE Irish Amateur Boxing Association (IABA) has made a formal application to the world governing body, AIBA, to host the 2011 World Championships in Dublin.

The championships, which will be the main qualifying tournament for the London Olympics the following year, would form the main part of the centenary celebrations of the IABA.

England are among the federations bidding for the championships that year but it would be most unusual for the world championships to go to the Olympic hosts.

Don Stewart, the administrative director of the IABA, admitted they were confident the application would succeed: “As Olympic hosts England will have automatic qualification in six allocated weights so it’s highly unlikely they will succeed.”

He said that Ireland can present a very attractive package: “It is in the very early stages but we have made the formal application. We don’t know how many countries will be in against us.

“We have a very good track record. When we hosted the championships in Belfast in 2002 they were hugely successful and the then president of AIBA said they were the best-run championships to date.”

The application has gone to the AIBA president, Dr Ching-Kuo Wu, who will ge a guest of the IABA at the European Union championships in Dublin in June.

The EU championships have grown in prestige and size due to recent accessions which have brought the total number of nations to 27 and, by adding Scotland and Wales as separate units within the UK, there will be 29 countries taking part in the week-long event.

Boxing will start on Monday, June 18, with the finals the following Saturday.

Dr John Lynch is chairman of the organising committee with Cork man Dan O’Connell the championship director and Don Stewart operations director.

After exciting preliminaries, the National Boy 4 and Youths Championships conclude this weekend at the National Stadium and there will be a particular interest in the Boy 4 63kg final between Tommy Kiely from the famed Glen club in Cork and Christopher Blaney from Navan.

Kiely, coached by Robert O’Driscoll and Thomas Kelleher, is defending champion and holds four county titles and four provincial championships. He won bronze in Russia at the European Cadet Championships.

The Fermoy club in Cork will visit the grave of their founder and head coach, the late John Mahon, en route to the championships to support their representative in the finals, Arthur McDonagh, who meets Fergal McCrory (Clonoe) in the Boy 4 57kg final.

McDonagh, now coached by Pa Flynn and John Bowes, was coached by John Mahon on his way to national titles in 2004 and 2005. He was a finalist last year.