EXCELLENCE IS DUNNE THING

BERNARD DUNNE wants excellence to be the benchmark as Irish boxing enters a new Olympic cycle. Dunne was yesterday unveiled as the new Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) Highperformance director on a four-year contract. “My main vision is we inspire and enable Irish boxers to achieve excellence in performance. Focus on performances and the outcomes will take care of themselves,” he said. The Dubliner – whose father Brendan represented Ireland at light-fly at the 1976 Olympiad – won 11 Irish titles in the amateur ranks before turning pro in 2001. He went on to claim the WBA World superbantam title in March 2009, stopping Ricardo Cordoba in Dublin. But he dropped the belt to Thailand’s Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym in Dublin later that year and retired in 2010 with 28 (15 KO) wins from 30 fights. Dunne added: ”What will be of benefit to me is that I understand what boxers go through and the choices they have to make. I can very much relate to boxers because I come from that background. I’m not going to focus on outcomes, I’m going to focus on processes rather than anything else.” Dunne will be at the National Stadium this weekend for Ireland’s round robin clashes with France, Germany, Italy and Russia, ahead of June’s European Men’s Championships in the Ukraine. But he acknowledged that losing Katie Taylor, Michael Conlan and Paddy Barnes to the pro game has been a big blow. “We’re going through a transitional stage, having lost boxers from Rio. There’s no doubt that Paddy, Michael and Katie are some of the finest athletes that this country has ever produced. “But when you look at the strength we have in terms of our youth system... we tend to produce at all ages and it’s about making sure that we give them every opportunity.”

KNOWS THE ROPES Bernard Dunne said yesterday in Dublin that he plans to pass on his experience