Nevin takes gold to cap Italian job
After clinching his Olympic place with a semi-final victory on Friday, the Mullingar boxer fulfilled his promise to capture the title with a controlled 17-10 victory over Moldovian Veaceslav Gojan.
Trailing by five points after the second round, Nevin, who won an Irish Examiner National Junior Sports Star award on Wednesday, produced a thrilling display in the third to outclass Gojan.
Nevin recalled: “I enjoyed the fight and to win the gold medal was all I could hope for. It was great to be up there on the podium and hear the National Anthem being played.”
He now joins Paddy Barnes on the Olympic team for Beijing but hopes are high that at least two more boxers will join them from the qualifying tournament in Athens next month. He admitted that Olympic qualification was not a consideration for him 12 months ago.
“It was more than I dreamed of coming out here,” the 18-year-old Mullingar man said. “This time last year the Olympic Games were far from my mind. I was thinking maybe about the senior championships and winning a senior title. I won the junior, the U21 and then the intermediate titles and began to believe anything was possible. I was pretty confident coming out but I had only one senior tournament behind me and didn’t know what to expect. Here I am now thinking about an Olympic medal and I believe it is possible.”
High Performance Director, Gary Keegan, heaped praise on Nevin. Saturday’s gold medal was his fifth at international level.
“It is not as if he was an unknown or anything like that. We have been keeping him under wraps for the past few years because he is still very young but he has always been very much a part of our programme We always felt we had a boy who would win a medal for us at the London Olympics in 2012 and look what has happened. This boy could win a medal in Beijing.”
Keegan was full of praise for the Irish team in Pescara: “With 42 nations competing this tournament was equal to a European championships. We came away from the tournament with a gold medal and two bronze and if that was a European championships it would be a record. To crown it we were the fifth nation on the list at the end of the competition. The performances were overshadowed by the fact that it was an Olympic qualification tournament and, as a result of that, Kenneth Egan and John Joe Joyce, who both won bronze medals, were very disappointed not to qualify.”
Added Keegan: “We have so many positives coming out of this tournament. All along my target for the Olympic Games has been three and, while I firmly believe that is still on I am now beginning to agree with those who have predicted four or even five.
“David Oliver Joyce was very impressive out here, Johnny Joyce can do it and Roy (Sheahan) if he is back, has to be considered and then, of course we have Kenny (Egan) and Darren (Sutherland) who I feel will qualify. But let’s not forget that there are still a lot of big fish in that pond out there and it is not going to be easy.”
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