QUALIFYING IN QUESTION

THE postponement of the European Olympic boxing qualifiers until early next year places a serious question mark over plans to resume the tournament where it finished on St Patrick’s day.

The European qualifiers for Tokyo will be held in a host city to be confirmed next February/march and the final World qualifiers in May/june 2021, according to sources.

The European qualifiers were abandoned after three days of competition in London on March 16 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sixteen flyweights and featherweights – including Ireland’s Brendan Irvine – qualified for the 32nd Olympiad before the tournament was prematurely aborted with nine Irish boxers still in the mix for qualification

The nine Irish boxers are Kellie Harrington (top), Aoife O’rourke, George Bates, Michaela Walsh, Emmett Brennan, Kiril Afanasev, Aidan Walsh, Michael Nevin and Dean Gardiner.

The International Olympic Committee’s Boxing Task Force (BTF) revealed the qualifiers would pick up from where they were postponed, and the competition schedule that resulted from the draw still stands.

The BTF explained that only athletes that remain after the end of the third day of the abandoned competition would be eligible to participate when the qualifiers resume and results remain valid moving forward.

A broad consensus is emerging that while the boxers that qualified in London last March remain qualified that the remainder of the tournament should be re-drawn.

BOXING: WARRINGTON VOW