No injuries for Irish boxers ahead of Olympic qualifier

Irish captain Ken Egan, Darren Sutherland and John Joe Joyce will all be in action today just one bout away from booking their tickets for Beijing at the final Olympic qualification tournament for European boxers at the Olympic Centre of Nikaia in Athens, Greece.

All three weighed-in this morning, and according to High Performance Director Gary Keegan there are no injury problems ahead of what is a crucial day for Irish amateur boxing.

Today's semi finals begin at 1pm Irish time (3pm Athens time). The semi-finals will be contested in one ring as opposed to the two rings that were in operation up to and including the quarter finals.

Egan and Joyce will meet German opponents in the shape of light welterweight Sipahi Harun and light heavyweight Gottlieb Weiss, while Sutherland faces Moldavian Victor Cotiujanschii.

If all three Irish boxers win then they will have qualified for the 2008 Olympics.

Sutherland, from the St Saviours club in Dublin, could have two shots at Olympic qualification as middleweights that lose their semi finals will go into a box off with the other beaten semi finalist.

Neilstown Dublin clubman, Egan, meantime, beat Weiss 15-12 in a round robin tournament in Germany last August.

St Michael's Athy ace Joyce, a three times national senior champion at the age of nineteen, meets the in-form Harun in a bout which looks set to go right down to the final bell.

The Athens tournament will conclude with finals in all weight categories tomorrow and three semi final box-offs at bantamweight, welterweight and middleweight.

Worldwide, 225 of the 286 Olympic places have so far been distributed via the AIBA qualification process which began with the World Championships at the University of Illinois in Chicago last October.

Twenty five further Olympics places will be claimed in Athens this weekend.

Light flyweight Paddy Barnes, from the Holy Family club in Belfast, and Cavan bantamweight John Joe Nevin have already qualified for the 2008 Olympics.