Quigley: I couldn’t lift my arms up
The Finn Valley BC (Donegal) fighter lost out on a unanimous decision to Kazakhstan’s Zhanibek Alimkhanuly in Saturday’s AIBA Elite World Championships 75kg final in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The Irish squad arrived in Dublin Airport yesterday after spending over a month abroad in training camp and competition.
Quigley revealed that he was so exhausted in the last round of Saturday’s final that he couldn’t lift his arms.
“In the last round, I was saying to myself ‘this is for the world title’ and I was just trying to punch and punch and I couldn’t punch no more. My arms were gone. I couldn’t lift them up, he said.
“You need the luck of the draw. My lad (Alimkhanuly), I’m not saying he was lucky or anything, he beat me on the day fair and square, there’s nothing to be said about that.
“He had a rest day before the semi-finals, and then he had a rest day on the semi-finals because England’s Anthony Fowler pulled out.
“I boxed 24 hours before that and put in one of the best performances of my career. It took a lot out of me and I think it showed that the Kazakh was a bit more fresher.
Irish head coach Billy Walsh highlighted an outstanding statistic from Ireland’s training camp with Kazakhstan, Cuba and Azerbaijan in Almaty earlier this month.
“That training camp yielded 13 of the 20 finalists on Saturday, said Walsh, who was working Ireland’s corner with Zuar Antia and Eddie Bolger.
“Eight of those guys won gold. The four nations, including ourselves, that took part in that training camp finished in the top six in the medals table. It was a quality camp.
“We set ourselves a target of two medals and we achieved that and we’ve got to be happy with that against the best in the world. The quality there was very high.
“When the team is advancing it’s only natural that you want to surpass your targets. We’re always looking to improve. With a bit of luck we could have had five in the semi-finals.”
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