Joe Ward and Ray Moylette show off the gold medals they won at 2011 European Elites – both men are Ireland’s only two World Youth champions.
Ireland is building up toward November’s AIBA World Men’s Youth Championships in St Petersburg, Russia.
The squad for the tournament will be confirmed shortly.
Irish boxing has a proud history at this level. Click here, here, here for reports from www.iaba.ie in 2008 and 2010.
So far, 13 medals have been claimed at the World Men’s Youths, formerly called the World Junior Championships before being reclassified in 2008.
Eamonn Loughran and Denis Galvin won silver and bronze at the 1987 Worlds in Cuba and Eamonn Magee secured silver two years later in Puerto Rico, followed by a bronze medal win for Neil Sinclair at Canada 1992.
Six years later, Harry Cunningham took home silver from Argentina in the light-fly class and Coleman Barrett won bronze at Hungary 2000.
Andy Lee
Former WBO World middleweight champion Andy Lee had to settle for light-middle silver on a hot and humid evening in Santiago de Cuba in 2002, and Irish boxing, courtesy of Ray Moylette, won its first World Youth gold in Mexico in 2008.
Jamie Kavanagh and Tommy McCarthy brought home silver and bronze to add to Moylette’s top of the podium finish to celebrate Ireland’s best outing at this level so far. The Guadalajara-hosted Championships marked the first occasion the tournament was formally called the World Youth Championships.
Two years later, Joe Ward and Ryan Burnett secured gold and silver in Azerbaijan, which qualified both men for the inaugural Olympics Youths the same year in Singapore where Burnett won an historic gold.
Kurt Walker reached the semi-finals in Armenia in 2012 to add to Ireland’s collection of two gold, six silver and five bronze medals so far from the AIBA World Men’s Youth Championships.
Katie Rowland and Michaela Walsh won double bronze at the 2011 World Women’s Youth Championships in Turkey and Christina Desmond secured silver at the 2013 edition of the tournament, while Natasha Logan Logan won bronze in 2015 in Chinese Taipei to improve Ireland’s medal haul for both sexes at World Youth level to two gold, seven silver and eight bronze.