Egan’s Olympic dream back on

LAST year Kenneth Egan was one of the favourites to qualify for the Beijing Olympics but he lost an excellent opportunity at the world championships in Chicago and missed out on another chance in Pescara six weeks ago but he is back on track again, writes Brendan Mooney.

Today he will join four other Irish boxers in the quarter-finals of the Olympic qualifying tournament in Athens, all of whom are bidding for places alongside light flyweight Paddy Barnes and bantamweight John Joe Nevin in Beijing.

“It was just a little ramp on the road to Beijing and now I am back on track again,” he said last night after an impressive 23-14 victory over the Italian light heavyweight, Allesandro Sinacore.

But he was the first to admit that he had to dig deep for the victory after Sinacore caught him flat footed for three points with three big left hands in the opening 10 seconds.

He fought back to share the round 4-4 and after he was caught with another left at the start of the second he had to pull out all the stops to keep in touch — losing the round 6-5.

In the third round, he matched his opponent punch for punch. He gave the Italian a standing count from a big left hand and when he had him in dire straits with half a minute remaining in the round, Sinacore spat out his gumshield for respite. Egan won the round 6-3 to lead by two points.

The fourth round was totally Egan’s and he was six points up and coasting when the Italian spat out his gumshield a second time, getting a public warning.

“He caught me with a couple of big looping lefts at the start,” Egan admitted. “I didn’t think he would be throwing them at all. Once I weathered that I was grand. I knew what he was going to throw then.

“That’s all he really relied on was the hook. He didn’t throw a straight shot throughout the fight so once I mastered the distance from the hooks I was grand. I started picking off the shots and I caught him with a good left hook in the third round and he took a count. He was a strong lad. Others might not have recovered from that.

“I started to pick the shots then. I made him miss and counter punched for the remainder of the third and all of the last round.

“There were some positives to take away from the fight. I dug deep when he went ahead early on. A lot of people would have just given up then but there was no way I was going to lose. I’m back on track now.”

He will have a familiar face in the other corner when he climbs into the ring for his quarter-final. Daniel Kool (Holland) beat Vladimir Reznicek (Czech Republic) 17-7 last night and Egan already has a decision over the Dutch man.

Flyweight Conor Ahern will still have to pass this morning’s medical before he goes into action against Bato-Munko Vankeyev in this evening’s quarter finals.

Lightweight Ross Hickey was beaten 23-6 by Romal Amanov (Azerbaijan) in his preliminary while Heavyweight Tommy Sheahan was caught with a big left hook 40 secs into his contest with Tsolak Ananikyan (Armenia) and while he got back up on his feet, the referee finished the count. Super Heavyweight Cathal McMonagle won the last round 3-1 but lost his contest with Yosef Abed Elghani (Israel) 12-4.