Jenny Lehane done with Paris 2024 but not with boxing

MORE TO COME:Jennifer Lehane reacts after her defeat by Yuan Chang of Team China in their women's -54kg round of 16 bout. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Jenny Lehane’s 2024 Olympics is done but the Ashbourne boxer isn’t finished yet.

The Ashbourne bantamweight was eliminated after a convincing loss to China’s more experienced Yuan Chang at the Arena Paris Nord, losing by a unanimous decision to the 27-year old two-time Asian Games medallist.

“I think I did well in the first few rounds, thought the second round was my best round,” Lehane told RTÉ. “I think the overall experience of the Chinese fighter kind of overcame me today but I’m here at the Olympics and I’m blessed to be here. It’s been a tough journey, especially in the last year of qualification so this means the world to me to be here."

Lehane made it to the Games just five years after taking up the sport having excelled at Taekwondo prior to that. It’s a startling rose through the ranks in such a short space of time but this latest climb was beyond her.

Chang is another fighter to have turned to the ring after starting out in Taekwondo and trained in combat sports under the watchful eye of her father and her grandfather before she had reached double digits.

Boxing since she was 12, Chang was winning the Youth Olympics in 2014, her idol is Zou Shiming, the three-time Olympic medallist from 2008 and 2012 (both gold) and 2004 (bronze). Shiming was also a three-time world champion.

Chang’s own CV is well shy of that but she was brilliant against her Irish opponent on Tuesday, landing a succession of shots and avoiding the vast majority of the retorts. Lehane managed to improve at the start of the second round but it was never enough.

“When I step into the ring, I am a warrior,” Chang told China News ten years ago. She was more than that here: tactical, clever, agile and effective. She entered the last round knowing only a knockout would stop here and danced around accordingly.

"The second round was my best round,” said Lehane, who took a career break from teaching to make it to Paris. “Using my angles, kind of being in a bit more of a relaxed flow, kind of getting her to come onto me a little bit.

“I lost that a little bit going into the third, she was changing tactics as well then. But it's an honour to be in a ring with such experienced people and I’m only young, only doing this a few years so there is a lot more still to come from me.”