Air of confidence in Irish camp

THE fact that Liverpool was not selected as one of the two European qualifying tournaments for next year’s Olympic Games did not come a great disappointment to Irish boxing’s high performance director, Gary Keegan.

AIBA European Continental Bureau has decided that next year’s two European qualifying tournaments for the boxing competition at the 2008 Olympic Games will be held in Pescara, Italy, and Athens, Greece.

During its meeting held in Baku, Azerbaijan, where members were attending the 2007 AIBA Cadet World Championships, the European Continental Bureau received four presentations from the Italian, Greek, English (Liverpool) and Spanish (Madrid) Boxing Federations.

They eventually selected Pescara and Athens ahead of Liverpool and Madrid to host the events. England, ranked third, will be the first replacement should Pescara or Athens fail to host a tournament.

“I would not say it came as a big disappointment to us,” Keegan admitted. “We don’t expect to get any favours no matter where we go but when the qualifying tournament for Sydney was held in Liverpool we failed to get anyone through.”

The main focus of the Irish boxers at the moment is next month’s world championships in Chicago. The AIBA have already named a full complement of 11 boxers for that assignment and, with any boxer who makes the top four in his division guaranteed a place in the Olympic tournament, there is an air of confidence throughout the camp. “Our target is to get three boxers qualified for the Olympics,” Keegan said, but he was quick to point out that this would be over the three tournaments and not at the upcoming world championships alone.

“Of course we are focused on the world championships and we have been for some time but we are looking for qualification of boxers over the three rounds,” he said.

Light heavyweight, Kenneth Egan, the most experienced boxer in the squad, is currently leading the charge for qualification and Keegan admitted he would be a leading hope.

“He was been through it all before, he knows what he has to do and he is very capable of doing it,” he added.

And a lot of attention has been focused on middleweight Darren Sutherland in recent times. He has been building on his win at the European Union championships and took a major step forward when he beat the German, Dimitri Serdjok, in the Round Robin Tournament reversing the Chemistry Cup result when he was on the floor twice.

David Oliver Joyce is another big prospect. Since moving up to featherweight he is much stronger and just needs to get some consistency into his performance to take his career to a new level.

His cousin, John Joe Joyce, has also moved up a division and is improving with every bout. The Beijing Olympics may come too soon for him but, like David Oliver, he will be a prospect for 2012.

As regards next year’s qualifying tournaments the exact dates have still to be confirmed. It is expected that Italy will host its tournament over a five day period between February 24 and March 2, 2008, while Greece will welcome boxers from throughout Europe over a five day period between April 7-14, 2008.