They say that iron sharpens iron and Irish High Performance coach John Conlan says Ireland and Great Britain can join forces to make sure they both hit the medal trail at the Tokyo Olympics.
onlan revealed that the GB team bidding for slots at the Games spent a week sparring with their Irish counterparts at Jordanstown and it is a set-up that both camps wish to repeat ahead of the crucial, final qualifying event in Paris later this year.
The impact of the pandemic left the qualifying process in disarray, with the World Qualifiers – the scheduled final attempt for boxers to make it to Tokyo – scrapped due to travel restrictions. That led to the IOC Boxing Task Force – who are organising the sport’s Olympic qualification process – to decide that boxers would qualify on their world ranking. One European boxer would be selected for each of the 13 weight categories.
That was good news for Kurt Walker, whose European gold medal-winning success meant he had accrued enough ranking points to be sure of landing the European featherweight slot.
Walker has joined flyweight Brendan Irvine on the plane to Tokyo and coach Conlan is confident more will be able to book their tickets at the final qualifying event in June. The European event was suspended last year in the middle of the tournament, just moments after Irvine had sealed his place in Tokyo, and will now pick up from where it left off.
Having seen the GB hopefuls in action, Conlan has no doubt they will have boxers on the podium in Tokyo and says his counterparts across the water, Lee Pullen and Robert McCracken, are very keen to return for more hard training.
“I had a call from Lee Pullen who said in all his 25 years in the sport the camp was the best one he had seen that replicated competition without being a competition and I know that Robert McCracken feels the same. With the way things are with Covid, I think it makes sense to work with the country on your doorstep and we have seen that everybody benefits,” said Conlan.
“With the European qualifying event coming up in June and the Olympics in July, I think it would be great to have the GB lads back over. We couldn’t get better preparation and I believe that we can have a strong mix of male and female boxers at the Games.
“Obviously the whole Covid impact has meant that this has been far from an ideal year of preparation for the Olympics and I know that a lot of coaches are upset because we haven’t had another Irish tournament to decide who should be given a shot at qualification. I fully understand that because I know from my own experience with my son Michael how he won his first Irish senior title and then went on to qualify.
“Kids deserve that chance to show that after three years’ hard work they can win a national title and then have a chance at making the Games but the cost of putting it on, all the logistics involved, just made it impossible.”
Brother and sister Aidan and Michaela Walsh of the Monkstown club are two of those boxers heading to Paris with high hopes, while world gold medallist Kellie Harrington is expected to be in Tokyo.
Conlan added: “We’ve got our holding camp in place in Japan; the qualifying event is too close to the Games to have any other competition in between.
“We are doing everything we can to make sure we are ready for Tokyo. Then it will be a case of what the new normal is at home and realising that the Commonwealth Games will be only 18 months away and another 18 months later will be the Paris Olympics.”
