LIVING THE DREAM
Jude Gallagher has been targeting the Paris Games since he was 10
IT WAS an idea born out of necessity which turned out to be a brainwave. In the afterglow of the 2012 London Olympics, John Gallagher was one of a group of parents bringing a carload of kids from Newtownstewart to Bishop Kelly boxing club outside of Omagh.
They were making the round trip of around an hour on the A5 a few times a week. Gallagher thought there must be a better way.
He sat down with a few likeminded individuals and looked at the logistics of setting up their own club in the small Tyrone town. Local kids flocked to the old town hall in the first couple of weeks. Within a few months of its inception, the 2 Castles (named for the town’s two castles) club had claimed two All-Ireland boys’ titles while two other fighters were narrowly beaten in finals. Just over a decade in existence now, the club can boast 35 Irish titles. And this summer, they will have their first Olympian.
‘We started it out of convenience, really,’ John Gallagher says. ‘There were a few carloads of kids going up to Bishop’s two or three times a week, and it’s at least a half-hour drive from here, so we just thought we should set up our own club in Newtown.
‘There was a GAA club here and a soccer club, but some kids aren’t into team sports and boxing might be something, an outlet for the kid who is a bit hard to handle or has ADHD or who just isn’t into Gaelic or soccer. Michael O’Neill and myself looked at setting it up, and it was just after London and Katie Taylor and all that, so the interest was there. The first year we had four All-Ireland finals and came home from the stadium with two golds and two silvers.’
And it was watching Taylor and John Joe Nevin do their stuff in London’s Excel Arena that a seed was planted in 10-year-old Jude Gallagher’s head. One day, he was going to go to the Olympics. His father even tried to place a bet that his son would be at the 2024 Games, but the bookmaker wouldn’t bite.
‘The London Olympics were the first I remember watching. I was actually doing the summer scheme in my primary school for some of it and I remember my teacher at the time, Aidan McGoan, calling me in to watch the Irish boxers fight,’ Jude recalls. ‘And when Katie won her gold, I was sitting on the arm of my dad’s chair watching and he said to me “when are you going to be there?”
‘So, we did it by process of elimination. For Rio in 2016, I was only going to be 14, so that was too young, 18 in 2020, still probably too young so we decided it was going to be 2024, because I would be 22. He emailed Paddy Power and asked for a price for me to qualify for 2024 Olympics but they just got back and said they didn’t have enough information to calculate odds.’
From that moment of sitting on the arm of his father’s chair, Gallagher thought of little else but becoming an Olympian. ‘Ever since I started boxing, all I wanted to do was get to the Olympics.’
John has been with his son every step of the journey, through the world youth medal and Commonwealth gold – and the occasional setback. And he was watching on in the northern Italian town of Busto Arsizio, where he saw his son achieve his lifelong goal.
Gallagher had to box four times in the featherweight division of the Olympic qualifying tournament. But he got better with each bout and sealed the deal with his best performance of the week, a comprehensive win over Turkmenistan’s Shukur Ovezov.
After his hand was raised following the 5-0 decision, and the tears
started to flow, Gallagher made his way to the upper tiers of the arena where John was sitting with his friend Gerard McLaughlin as well as Jude’s girlfriend Jessica and his sister Gráinne. Father and son embraced.
‘At that moment, it was like, we did it. He has been with me on every step of this journey and it was great that he was out in Italy with me to share that moment, because it was something that we both have worked towards for so long.’
Jude only started boxing because his older brother Noel was doing it at Bishop Kelly. But within a couple of years, it was clear the younger Gallagher possessed a special talent. As he reached his latter teens, John realised that Jude needed a higher level of coaching than he or any of those in 2 Castles could provide, so he called up Eric Donovan.
The five-time national elite champion had come down with Zaur Antia to cut the ribbon on the boxing club in 2013 and John had stayed in touch. ‘When Jude was 16, 17, we knew he was progressing to such a level that we needed more expertise. We asked Eric to coach him and he was more than happy to oblige.’
Donovan is out canvassing when he takes the call. The former national elite champion and boxing pundit is running for Sinn Feín in the upcoming local elections in Drogheda. But he’s more than delighted to chat about the gifted young fighter from Tyrone he has been mentoring for the past few years.
THE Athy native never made it to the Olympics, so helping Gallagher on his journey has felt extra special. ‘Everyone knows my history with the Olympics and how I didn’t make it, so seeing Jude do it, it felt good, really did. And I know how much he has put into it, he is a very talented fighter, but he also wants to learn. Any information he is given, he absorbs it. It’s a pleasure to work with someone like that,’ Donovan says.
When Donovan began coaching Gallagher, he was fighting at 52 kgs. But after talking to a nutritionist and looking at his diet, he moved up to 57kgs. ‘And now he has developed into a fully-fledged featherweight. He is comfortable at the weight.’
It’s also probably the most competitive division in Irish boxing at the moment, with the likes of Adam Hession, a former European under-23 champion, and Dylan Eagleston. However, like he did in Italy, Gallagher got better with every bout.
Growing up in Tyrone, Gallagher also gravitated towards Gaelic football. ‘I played Gaelic from under-eight right up to my final year of minor, when we won the county league. I didn’t have a great foot, but could get up and down the field because of my fitness from boxing. When I did get the ball, it was my job to lay it off to a shooter. But once I got to 17, had to give it up because of the boxing. But I still love the Gaelic, I am from Tyrone, so it is in my blood.’
And he is aware of how special it is to become the second boxer from Tyrone to go to the Olympics, after Tommy Corr who represented Ireland at Los Angeles in 1984. Gallagher met Corr for the first time just before Christmas when a function was held for all the top boxers from the region.
‘It was back in November, I had just won the elites and there was a function in Omagh, honouring all the great boxers that came from the Tyrone/Fermanagh area. That was the first time that I met Tommy. It was actually my brother Sean’s 30th birthday, so I stayed for a couple of hours before heading to Sean’s party.
‘But that was great for me, to meet so many fighters who had come before me from this area. I’m following in their footsteps and it was great to find out about the history of boxing in my area.’
And now the 2 Castles club and Jude Gallagher are creating their own history, showing how far they have come since his father hit upon the idea of forming a local boxing club in Newtownstewart.