Vladivostok, if loosely translated from Russian, means “to conquer the East”.
The Irish Olympic boxing squad of 2008, pictured above, headed to Vladivostok, the home base of the Russian Pacific nuclear fleet, to train and spar with the Russian national team in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
A few weeks later the five-strong squad touched down at Dublin Airport from China with three medals, Irish boxing’s biggest haul since the 1956 Games in Melbourne.
Ken Egan claimed silver and the late Darren Sutherland and Paddy Barnes took home bronze, while John Joe Nevin and John Joe Joyce made the last-16.
In a stand out statistic, all five Irish boxers were only beaten by the eventual gold medallists in their respective weight categories in Beijing.
Egan met China’s Zhang Xiaoping in the light-heavyweight final, but the Asian fighter, who was born in Inner Mongolia, was handed a controversial 11-7 decision and Egan’s dreams of landing gold and joining an illustrious light-heavyweight cast which included Muhammad Ali, who claimed light-heavyweight gold at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, were dashed.
Many boxing pundits believe that the final score to Xiaoping, who had been well beaten by Irish 2012 Olympian Darren O’Neill in a Multi Nations tournament prior to Beijing, did not reflect Egan’s performance, that the judges had failed to register some of the Dublin southpaw’s clear cut shots, particularly in the second and third rounds.
Egan dropped to his knees after the final bell, as did Xiaoping, in celebration. The 81kg gold medal would not be leaving China.
“I genuinely thought that I won that fight by two or three points, said Egan.
“Everyone says to me I went to the Olympics and I won the silver. I lost the gold in the final; that’s how I look at it. Okay, I came home with the silver medal, an amazing achievement. If I was offered that at the start of it, I would have taken it with both hands.
“It was a close final and he came out on top but it is behind me now and it’s history and it’s great to have been part of it.”
Meanwhile, Sutherland stopped Algerian middleweight Nabil Kassel in his opening bout and was then drawn against the powerful Venezuelan, Alfonso Blanco, in the last-16. Blanco had beaten the St Saviours OBA (Dublin) man at AIBA World Championships and Olympic qualifiers in Chicago en route to silver in the Windy City.
But Sutherland produced a fantastic performance to exact revenge in Beijing to guarantee himself at least bronze. That set up a semi-final clash with Great Britain’s James DeGale, a duel which the London-born middleweight won 10-3.
Egan, incidentally, beat Tony Jeffries 10-3 in the light-heavyweight semi-final, leaving the Olympic head-to-heads between Ireland and Team GB locked at 1-1 and an exact amount of points scored and conceded.
Barnes, who qualified for Beijing from the AIBA World Championships in Chicago, a tournament at which the great Muhammad Ali made a guest appearance, registered impressive 14-8 and 11-5 verdicts over Ecuador’s Jose Luis Meza and Poland’s Lukasz Maszcyk to assure himself of at least bronze in Beijing.
Zou Shiming, who had beaten the Irish Elite champion in the quarter-finals in Chicago, awaited, and once again there was controversy over the scoring after the Chinese light-flyweight was awarded a 15-0 verdict.
There is no questioning the fact that Shiming deserved his win. However, Barnes found the target at least six times in that clash and Shiming’s margin of victory was outrageously flattering.
Nevin, at 18 the youngest member of the Irish squad, booked his ticket for Beijing at the Olympic qualifiers in Pescara, Italy. Gary Keegan, the then Director of the Irish Amateur Boxing Association’s High-Performance Unit, had brought Nevin to Pescara, the second last Olympic qualifier for European boxers, for the experience.
However, Nevin, who also qualified for the 2012 Olympics, took his opportunity with both hands and made the Irish team for Beijing, where he beat Abdelhalim Ouarradi of Algeria before going out to eventual Olympic champion, Badar-Uugan Enkhbat of Mongolia.
Nevin put his Olympic disappointment behind him to become the first Irish male boxer in the 101-year history of the IABA to win two medals at World Championships level in Milan and Baku in 2009 and 2011.
Meanwhile, John Joe Joyce had lost on three occasions to Gyula Kate of Hungary prior to Beijing, but the St Michael’s Athy man put the record straight on the biggest stage of them all with a 9-5 decision in his opening bout.
The then IABA President Dominic O’Rourke, Joyce’s club coach, was at ringside. Joyce was then ahead by a single point going down the final stretch of his last-16 meeting with Felix Diaz, but the Dominican Republic light-welterweight found the target in the final few seconds to tie the bout at 11-11 before getting the nod a countback.
Joyce, who would go on to win bronze for Ireland at the European Championships in Liverpool later that year, was the second Irish boxer after Andy Lee in 2004 to exit the Olympic Games on a countback.
Billy Walsh and Zuar Antia worked Ireland’s corner in Beijing. Jim Walsh was the Irish team manager.
China finished on top of the medals table in Beijing. Ireland was in 12th spot, two places adrift of Cuba. Ireland finished in 11th position in the rankings table, two places above the USA.
The 2008 Olympic Games was the last Olympiad to exclude female boxers, which was a good omen for Ireland as certain female lightweight from Bray was poised to bridge the 20-year gap since Michael Carruth stood on top of an Olympic podium at Barcelona 1992.
The Irish Athletic Boxing Association are delighted to announce that we have partnered with Blocworx, a digital solution provider, to supply IABA affiliated clubs with access to a FREE digital contact tracing application. Government Covid-19 requirements specify that sporting clubs must keep a digital record of all persons attending their club for contact tracing purposes.This digital app will provide all affiliated clubs access to a user-friendly solution that is fully compliant with GDPR and Covid-19 requirements
To get set up contact info@blocworx.com and state that you would like to be added to https://boxing.blocworx.com and provide the club name and your own name. They will get back with a club admin login and club member login and video instructions.
INFORMATION FOR CLUBS IN RELATION TO TRAINING DURING LEVEL 3 RESTRICTIONS 18/09/20:
Ireland has moved from a short-term emergency response approach to a medium-term approach to managing risk and repairing the damage that COVID-19 has inflicted on society. A Framework for Restrictive Measures has been developed to help us to go about our daily lives as much as possible, while managing the behaviour of the virus.
On the 18th of September it was announced that Dublin would move into Level 3. Dublin will remain at Level 3 for a period of 3 weeks, until Friday 9 October, at which point the situation will be reviewed by the government, based on the status of the virus and the pertinent public health advice. These measures came into effect at midnight Friday 18th September. The rest of Ireland is currently at Level 2.
The Irish Athletic Boxing Association have received some clarification from the Expert Group on Return to Sport regarding the application of Level 3 restrictions for our affiliated clubs in Dublin, below are the relevant points.
Level 3 Sporting Restrictions:
Outdoors: Non-contact training only in pods of up to 15 (exemption for professional/elite/ inter-county sports/senior club championship).
Indoors: Individual training only. No exercise or dance classes. While not explicitly noted in the Framework an exemption extends for professional/elite /inter-county sports/senior club championship with regards to indoor training)
No matches or events can take place. Exemption: professional/elite/inter-county/club championship/horse-racing can take place behind closed doors.
Level 3 allows for individual training only, no organised Group Activity including Exercise classes should take place.
Pod Training does not apply to activity indoors at level 3, as individual training only is permitted. No group exercise is permitted indoors in Level 3.
*Please note members who reside in Dublin but who are involved with a club outside of the county are not permitted to travel outside Dublin for any IABA activity.
The IABA will remain in discussions with the Expert Group on Return to Sport and will issue additional advisory information relating to level 3 restrictions as soon as it becomes available. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our clubs for their cooperation and hard work during this extremely difficult and testing period. Please Stay Safe and keep updated of all public health measures. For more information please visit:
A message from the Board of Directors Secretary Mr. John Nangle states:
Irish Athletic Boxing Association would like to advise that the Irish Athletic Boxing Convention and (AGM), scheduled to take place on Sunday 4th October 2020, has been postponed in keeping with ongoing advice from Government on social distancing. Notification of the rescheduled date will issue in due course.
