FINAL COUNT
Boxing is teetering on its last legs and that’s ominous for Irish sport overall
THE future stars of Irish boxing are in Italy. A team of 24 of the brightest and best young male and female talents have travelled with four coaches to the European Junior Championships in Montelsilvano. Medals are the expectation now when Ireland go to these events and they had already been assured of one by the first day as promising Castleisland middleweight Mary McDonagh went straight through to the semi-finals.
There will be more medals on the plane home. That is the way it is now. It was a point Aidan Walsh was keen to emphasise on Thursday morning as he was quizzed by journalists on the existential crisis facing amateur boxing.
The Tokyo bronze medalist’s message was clear. Stop focusing on the negativity and look at all the success. It is remarkable how Irish boxers continually punch above their weight on a global stage. Problem is… we can’t ignore the elephant in the room.
As things stand, emerging teenage talent like McDonagh will never get the chance to represent Ireland at an Olympic Games.
The International Olympic Committee have been at the end of their tether about how the sport has been governed for a long time.
The judging controversy in Rio
They were knocking down the door here after the last Olympics
was only the tip of the iceberg. The IOC don’t have any confidence in Umar Kremlev or the International Boxing Association as it currently stands. That is why last week’s vote in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, delayed by 45 minutes because of a power cut, was seismic.
Given the backing of more than 100 member associations, Kremlev can feel he has legitimacy as the head of the organisation.
But the IOC won’t work with him. And so the sport that has produced some of the most memorable moments in Olympic history – from the world first seeing a lippy Louisville native called Cassius Clay to Katie Taylor’s emotional gold in London – and the sport that has been responsible for more than half of this country’s medals, will no longer be part of the Games from 2028 onwards. It is an extraordinary situation.
In the words of French boxing chief Dominque Nato, who was part of a group that were looking to depose Kremlev, amateur boxing has ‘effectively signed its own death warrant’ with last week’s vote. If the IOC refuse to work with the current leadership of the governing body, where does the sport go from here?
While powerhouses such as the US, France and Germany opposed Kremlev, the Russian businessman consolidated power in much the same way that Sepp Blatter did in FIFA for years – he courted the smaller nations.
In the past six weeks, he has travelled across Africa and the Middle East in the manner of a gladhanding politician while also stopping off in his native Russia to cut the ribbon on a new national boxing centre with his friend, Vladimir Putin. Kremlev has secured a multi-million dollar sponsorship deal with Gazprom and Adidas, rescuing an organisation that was on the brink of bankruptcy. However, the price of solvency may just be Olympic participation, still the pinnacle for all amateur fighters.
Paul Johnston knows the effect an Olympic Games can have on a boxing club. How membership numbers can swell after a couple of medals. He saw it first-hand last summer.
Of course, it helped that Johnston’s club in Monkstown was where the Walsh siblings, Aidan and Michaela, called home whenever they weren’t in the High Performance Unit.
The talent that brought the pair to Tokyo was cultivated under Johnston’s watchful eye. And that Aidan went on to win a bronze medal probably did no harm, either.
So, they swarmed into the gym in Newtownabbey outside Belfast with a faraway dream of the glory they had watched on television. ‘They were knocking down the door here after the Olympics last year.
‘With the history Ireland has with boxing in the Olympics, it is easy to see why kids come in, hoping to be the next Kellie Harrington or Michael Carruth, or the next Aidan Walsh,’ says Johnston.
‘But boxing isn’t just about the Olympics. There are more than 350 boxing clubs in Ireland and maybe 20 or 25 of them have produced an Olympian – the clubs serve a much deeper purpose in their communities and among people than just cultivating an Olympic dream.
‘When a young person comes to a boxing club at eight or nine, it is about winning a city championship or a county championship or a provincial title and then progressing on to national level – it is only the best of the best who have will Olympic ambitions, maybe one in 10,000.’
But it has always been the dream sustaining those who want to reach the top. Boxing does so much good in the community – only this week national coach Igor Khmil has brought a team over from his native Ukraine where they will fight a selection from Galway and Dublin.
This is part of the good that the sport can do. But it still remains to be seen how it can survive in its present form without the Olympic pinnacle.
‘I still think a solution will be found,’ Johnston says. ‘It is only brinkmanship at the moment. It is almost impossible to imagine an Olympics without boxing.’
However, that is the stark reality the sport is now facing.