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BY BERNARD O’NEILL (IABA PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER)

Katie Taylor can guarantee herself at least a bronze medal at the 6th AIBA World Championships with a victory over Anastasia Belyakova in Barbados this evening.

The Bray woman, who is targeting her third AIBA World title in a row, will meet the Russian lightweight over four, two minute rounds at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex in Bridgetown.

It is estimated that the last eight clashes will go ahead between 10pm and 11pm (Irish time) on the Caribbean island state.

Whoever emerges from the 60Kg duel will meet either Queen Underwood (USA) or Denitsa Eliseeva (Bulgaria) in Friday’s semi-finals.

Over 30 nations are now through to the quarter-finals stages, with China and Turkey having qualified seven and six boxers across the ten weight divisions.

Russia, Poland, Hungary, Kazakhstan, North Korea and the USA have progressed four to the last-eight stage.

The Ukraine, Romania, England, Germany and India will have three boxers vying for at least a bronze medal, while Norway, Netherlands, Philippines, Thailand, Brazil and Australia will have two.

France, Sweden, Greece, Wales, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Spain, Finland, Italy, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Canada, Argentina and Tunisia will have one representative in the last eight.

Meantime, China’s Cheng Dong, who Taylor beat in the 2008 AIBA World final in Ningbo City, China, is through to the last eight at the Championships and will be in action this evening.

Thursday is a rest day at the Championships. The semi-finals and finals will be held on Friday and Saturday.

Please see below attachment (below squad) for draw and full 60Kg results so far.

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6th AIBA World Women’s Championships Results/Draw

September 10th

51Kg: Ceire Smith (Ireland) lost to Nilmini Jayasinghe (Sri Lanka) 1-14 (Last 64)

75Kg: Sinead Kavanagh (Ireland) v Wided Younsi (Tunisia) (Result annulled) (Last 32)

September 11th

60Kg: Katie Taylor (Ireland) beat Neetu Chahal (India) 12-2 (Last 32)

September 13th

60Kg: Katie Taylor (Ireland) beat Adriana Araujo (Brazil) 20-5 (Last 16)

64Kg: Allana Murphy (Ireland) lost to Gulsum Tatar (Turkey) 4-21 (Last 16)

75Kg: Sinead Kavanagh (Ireland) lost to Ll Jinzi (China) 3-9 (Last 16)

September 15th (Quarter -finals)

60Kg: Katie Taylor (Ireland) v Anastasia Belyakova (Russia) (afternoon session)

Irish squad 6th AIBA World Women’s Championships Barbados September 6th/19th

Team Manager: Stephen Connolly

Director of Boxing: Dominic O’Rourke

Coaches: Peter Taylor & Zuar Antia

Referee&Judge: Fionna Hennigan

51Kg (Flyweight) Ceire Smith (Cavan BC)

60Kg (Lightweight) Katie Taylor (Bray BC)

64Kg (Light-welterweight) Allana Murphy (Eastside, Belfast)

75Kg (Middleweight) Sinead Kavanagh (Drimnagh)

Source: Article & Photo - IABA

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SUNDAY INDEPENDENT in Ireland.

From the - Independent.ie - Sunday 12 September

By John O’Brien

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Gerry Storey and his ‘wee club’ in Belfast have created a lasting legacy in Irish boxing, writes John O’Brien

Patrick Barnes keeps a photo on his mobile phone. Every now and again he changes it, but the theme remains constant. It used to show his son, Paddy, during his hour of glory at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Now it depicts him standing on the podium at this year’s European Championships in Moscow. From bronze to gold, it has been upgraded. It will do, he says, until something better comes along.

His laugh rises above the din in a crowded room on the second floor of a modest building on the New Lodge Estate in north Belfast. The Reccy has housed the Holy Family Boxing Club since the early 1970s. Six days a week they file up the stairs and cram into the gym, the tiny space an incongruous setting for the magnitude of their achievements and the breadth of their ambition.

On evenings like this, Barnes will sit in the corner and wonder how many disparate elements you can fit into such a small space: Catholic, Protestant, amateur, professional, girls, boys, kids, hardened fighters. He sees Carl Frampton, Barry McGuigan’s protégé, limber up in front of him, donning what looks to be an old-fashioned pair of long johns. Barnes cracks up. “Could the boy McGuigan not buy you something better than that?” he laughs.

Over the years Frampton and Paddy Barnes became close. They sparred for hours in the ring and fought for Antrim and Ulster titles that had the boxing community in Belfast buzzing. Frampton, a stockier fighter, usually held the edge but Barnes’ fighting spirit always made it a tight call. Frampton, the young pro from the Loyalist Tigers Bay area of north Belfast. Barnes, the amateur champion from across the road in Catholic Cliftonville. Once they entered the gym, such distinctions never mattered.

Where else would you see it, Barnes Snr wonders. The history and tradition is splashed on every available square inch of wall around them. Ulster titles, national titles, European and world medals, Commonwealth titles, Olympians, Olympic medals. “Northern Ireland has won 23 Commonwealth medals and Holy Family has 11 of those,” he says proudly. “Irish boxers have won 12 Olympic medals. We’ve got two of those. We’ve over 105 national titles. This wee club.”

And they are ever pushing on. For all their years of endurance in tough times, Holy Family never had a year like this year. A European gold in Moscow. Gold at the Youth Olympics in Singapore. Patrick Barnes remembers all those evenings his son would spar with Ryan Burnett, seeing what the rest of the country wasn’t seeing, knowing that they hadn’t just one star on their hands, but two.

Four months ago, Burnett claimed a silver medal at the World Youth Championships in Azerbaijan and felt he had been robbed in the final against Salman Alizada who was fighting in front of his home crowd. Yet when he returned home the papers were full of the bother created when Billy Walsh had been overlooked for the position of high-performance director. They found that strange and disconcerting.

They have no issues with the high-performance set-up here. Barnes spends three days a week in Dublin and knows that without the top-class sparring and facilities they offer he wouldn’t be European champion or Olympic bronze medallist. Yet Dublin will never be home. You watch him in the ring now, holding the pads while Aidan Walsh, a 13-year-old with the hunger and ability to be a future champion, goes through his paces in the ring, his face breaking into a broad grin as the kid bears down upon him with menacing intent.

He is happier here than any place in the world. In the small, proud gym that shaped him. Among the people who made him.

One man in particular.

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AIBA - Article.

The third day of competition in the AIBA Women’s World Championships saw the legendary Katie Taylor of Ireland in the ring for the first time in the hotly contested lightweight category. Even though her main rival is not in the competition, today’s action showed that there are plenty of other serious contenders for the lightweight medals in Barbados.

Another legend in women’s boxing, Mary Kom from India, easily cleared the next hurdle on her quest for a fourth world title at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex today. Proving that the move up to 48kg has been a mere formality, she dispatched Australia’s Jenny Smith before the end of the first round; the referee stopped the contest when the score was already 9:0 in Mary Kom’s favor.

After a close 4:3 victory over Italy’s Valeria Calabrese, Lynsey Holdaway vowed to put Wales on the map in the quarter-finals. Unfazed by the prospect of meeting Mary Kom in her next bout and still buzzing from the adrenaline of her win, the 25 year-old from Merthyr Tydfil was sitting in the front row of the athlete’s seating deconstructing the bout with her Welsh team-mates Ashley Brace and Rebecca Price shortly after her victory.

“Road to Barbados” training camp star Anusha Kodithuwakku from Sri Lanka notched up a second consecutive victory today, edging past China’s Luo Jiaoling 7:5 to book her place in the quarter-finals, much to the delight of her training camp colleagues. An in-form Alice Aparri will be her opponent on Wednesday after she beat Russia’s Svetlana Gnevanova 8:3.

Big-scoring bouts put Romania’s Steluta Duta (17:8) and Kazakhstan’s Nazgul Boranbayeva (11:2) through to the next round, while Asian Champion Kim Myong Sim from North Korea had to work hard for her 6:3 victory over France’s Sarah Ourahmoune to book the last quarter-final spot at light flyweight.

Lorna Weaver is an unlikely name for a French boxer and a post-bout interview revealed why. Weaver was born in France of English parents who later returned to England. But the 27-year-old decided to stay in her adopted homeland, where she boxes out of the Boxing Beats Aubervilliers club. She switched from French to Mancunian-accented English just as easily as she trod the canvas on her 17:4 victory over Pamela Sanchez of Costa Rica in the bantamweight division today.

Greece’s Evgenia Tasidou put everything she had learned from the Road to Barbados training camp into practice perfectly today to beat Australia’s Kelly McGrath 12:9. She will face Hungary’s Csilla Nemedi-Varga in one of two all-European quarter-finals in this division.

Reigning European and World Champion Karolina Michalczuk from Poland eased into the quarter-final on the back of a clear 14:2 victory over Venezuela’s Leiryn Flores. She faces Turkey’s Ayse Tas in the next round in the second all-European affair. Tas beat Brazil’s Clelia Dacosta 8:1, although her coach - dismissed in the fourth round - was unable to join in the ringside post-bout celebration.

The audience needed to watch closely if they wanted to see any jabs from Katie Taylor tonight. She showed a canny patience to simply wait for the right moment and launch devastating combinations against India’s Neetu. A vicious right hook in the first round could almost have sealed the contest, but Neetu managed to hold out for the full eight minutes.

The 12:2 final result did not reflect the intensity of the competition. “I wouldn’t say it was easy,” Taylor said. “She was very awkward. The first bout of the tournament is always the hardest, just to get into the tournament. We have come over with four boxers. It makes it easier when I have someone to talk to and it’s great that they could come along. Women’s boxing is coming on really well in Ireland.”

Taylor will face multiple PanAmerican Champion Adriana Araujo from Brazil in the quarter-final. A knock-down in the second round against Leeann Boodram put an early end to the bout when the referee stopped the contest with the score at 15:1 in Araujo’s favor.

Kenya’s Nganga Muthoni had an emphatic victory over Grenada’s Chloe Toussaint with the referee stopping the bout before Toussaint had the chance to land a scoring punch. It was the second lightweight victory for Africa today after Morocco’s Mahjouba Oubtil succeeded in another shut-out, eliminating Georgia’s Marika Khorava by an impressive 16:0.

Saving the best until last, Queen Underwood of the USA and Road to Barbados training camp graduate Mavzuna Chorieva of Tajikistan put on a thrilling display in the evening’s final bout. Sensing the electric atmosphere the referee tried to intervene as little as possible as the boxers tussled but drew the line at a bizarre chest-bumping incident in the second round that earned both boxers a penalty. The score was 6:6 at the end of the eight minutes and an agonizing single point difference on the individual scores handed Underwood the victory, leaving Chorieva in floods of tears at missing out on the quarter-final.

Article and Photo the AIBA

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BERNARD O’NEILL (IABA PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER)

There was double disappointment for Ireland at the 6th AIBA World Women’s Championships in Barbados last night following preliminary round defeats for Ceire Smith and Sinead Kavanagh.

Cavan flyweight Smith, at 17 the youngest member of the four-strong Irish squad, was beaten 14-1 by Nilmini Jayasinghe of Sri Lanka despite a spirited performance at the Garfield Sobers Gym in Bridgetown.

Dublin middleweight Kavanagh lost out 14-6 to Wided Younsi of Tunisia.

Younsi was 5-2 up at the end of the first but Kavanagh bravely fought back to level affairs at 6-6 before the conclusion of frame two.

However, the Tunisian kept Kavanagh scoreless whilst adding another eight points to her total in the final two rounds.

Katie Taylor, who is targeting her third World 60Kg title on the trot, meets Neetu Chahal in the last 32 tonight.

The last 32-bout should go ahead between 1am and 2am Sunday morning Irish time.

Belfast light-welterweight Allana Murphy will be in action against reigning World champion Gulsum Tatar of Turkey on Monday.

The clash is a repeat of last month’s European Union meeting which Tatar won 4-0.

Women’s senior bouts are contested over four, two minute rounds.

Source and article IABA

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Irish squad 6th AIBA World Women’s Championships Barbados September 6th/19th

Team Manager: Stephen Connolly

Director of Boxing: Dominic O’Rourke

Coaches: Peter Taylor & Zuar Antia

Referee&Judge: Fionna Hennigan

51Kg (Flyweight) Ceire Smith (Cavan BC)

60Kg (Lightweight) Katie Taylor (Bray BC)

64Kg (Light-welterweight) Allana Murphy (Eastside, Belfast)

75Kg (Middleweight) Sinead Kavanagh (Drimnagh)

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Two-time World Champion and four-time European Champion Irish legend Katie Taylor would became her third title in Bridgetown, Barbados at the 6th AIBA Women’s World Championships which will be starting with the first competition day on September 9.

Bray-based Katie Taylor has been boxing since 1998 in her home town with leading of her father Peter Taylor. When Katie was a child she grew up watching her father shadow boxing in their family kitchen.

When Katie Taylor was only 18 on her first international competition at the 2004 Torneo Italia claimed the gold medal after beating experienced Jennifer Ogg of Canada in the final and started her long winning series.

She became European Champion in Tonsberg, Norway next year but despite of her perfect style and technic she lost the second contest against North Korean Kang Kum Hui at the 2005 AIBA Women’s World Championships in Podolsk, Russia.

In 2006 Katie Taylor made a perfect year, she defended her European title in Warsaw and achieved her first World Championships gold medal in New Delhi, India with her five easily winning contests.

Katie Taylor defended her European title in Vejle in 2007 while she acquired her second World Championships gold in Ningbo two years ago where her first contest against Danuse Dilhofova of the Czech Republic was really close but after her short victory Katie Taylor won easily the Championships.

After the positive IOC decision that women boxing has been included to the London Summer Olympic Games another great female boxer Sofya Ochigava moved up into the Olympic 60kg weight class.

The 23-year-old two-time World Champion Russian athlete unexpectedly has defeated Katie Taylor at the Grand Prix Usti nad Labem Tournament this year but Ochigava won’t be able to compete at the World Championships in Barbados therefore the most expected fight of the tournament on their re-match will be cancelled.

In Sofya Ochigava’s absence Katie Taylor is the biggest favourite in Barbados at the Olympic 60kg weight division where her greatest rivals will be Turkish Prime Ministry Tournament winner Claire Ghabrial of Australia, multiple Panamerican Champion Adriana Araujo of Brazil, Asian Championships silver medalist North Korea’s Ryu Yong Sim, newcomer Daria Abramova of Russia and Asian Champion Mavzuna Choriyeva of Tajikistan.

The Irish women squad included four boxers travelled to Bridgetown still in September 2 therefore Katie has got enough time to get acclimatized. There were many large competition in Katie Taylor’s career where she was the only Irish boxer but she will have three compatriot at the World Championships now.

Article: The AIBA

Photo: IABA

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Originally published: independent.ie

By Vincent Hogan

Monday August 30 2010

It’s getting boring, isn’t it? Another sparkly-eyed Irish boxer steps out through Arrivals at Dublin airport and straight into a blizzard of flashbulbs. Ryan Burnett’s cheeky, street-kid smile looked so free of any blemish last Friday night, it wouldn’t have been out of place on a Givenchy catwalk. You’d swear he found that Olympic gold in the pocket of a health-spa robe.

The Belfast boy’s success is just the latest little trumpet line from that gym on Dublin’s South Circular Road where Billy Walsh oversees the most productive factory floor in Irish sport.

And maybe we’re becoming nonchalant about the success of boxing’s High Performance programme in the way Liverpool supporters once assumed things about their club. I mean the last time our boxers came home empty-handed from a tournament, half the country had holiday homes in Tuscany.

After the 2007 World Championships in Chicago, some smart chaps in the IABA were inclined to call for the heads of Walsh and the then programme director, Gary Keegan.

Their ire gave voice to a raft of philosophical differences between old and new in Irish boxing. Now you might imagine that the gold rush since would have the committee boys offering up novenas of thanks that this revolution wasn’t sabotaged by their scepticism.

For, as the IABA now so proudly declares on its website, boxing is “Ireland’s most successful Olympic sport”.

But those differences haven’t simply prevailed, they’ve hardened. So much so that Walsh must be beginning to think that some in the Association would quite like him to disappear into a hole.

He’s been Head Coach of High Performance for eight years now but, since Beijing, he’s been the de-facto programme director too. Despite the IABA receiving Government funding for that directorship, Billy has never been compensated for an extra workload.

Then, in April, the Association finally got around to appointing a new HP director and, inexplicably, overlooked him.

The decision dismayed many in amateur boxing, not to mention those in the Sports Council who had watched Walsh develop the National Stadium operation into a crown jewel of funded sport in this country. Unhappy with the procedures involved in Dominic O’Rourke’s appointment, the Council refused to pay his salary.

They also withheld funding for a newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Don Stewart. It was their way of articulating deep unease with how the IABA goes about its business.

So what has happened since? Well, apart from the continued accumulation of medals, nothing.

Sports Minister, Mary Hanafin, was among those lauding the work of Walsh and his fellow coaches after a nine-man Irish team returned from Moscow in May, having finished second only to their hosts in the European Championship medal table.

Think about that. Second only to Russia in Europe.

Ireland won five medals at those Championships and, naturally, there was a lot of glad-handing at their homecoming.

Walsh was assured that his position as Head of High Performance would be formalised, while O’Rourke would be given a new role, in charge of “Boxing Development”. An armistice had been declared.

That was the evening of June 15, only the smallprint in need of tending.

Seventy-six days later, Walsh must be inclined to wonder if all that positivity was a hallucination. Sports Council funding is still being withheld and Walsh is still, effectively, doing a job he has never been paid to do.

Eccentricities abound. The Association, bizarrely, recommended an 81-year-old as “team-manager” for those Youth Olympics in the soupy heat of Singapore and, this week, O’Rourke will travel to Barbados for the Women’s World Championships despite not being a High Performance employee.

He also went to Hungary for the recent Women’s European Union Championships in spite of a Sports Council insistence that there is no provision in any of their funding for his travel.

In other words, the IABA and their pay-masters still seem to exist in parallel worlds.

This is extraordinary. Pete Taylor has, I understand, been uncomfortable with any attempted input from O’Rourke into the coaching of his daughter, Katie (hardly surprising given she is already the holder of four European and two World titles).

Meanwhile, the Association seemed quite happy — on more than one occasion recently — to dispense with the services of Jim Moore, widely regarded as one of the best junior coaches in world boxing.

Burnett’s wonderful gold medal win, then, serves really to obscure a tension bubbling underneath the surface of business on the South Circular Road. Promises have been made and habitually broken. Resolutions materialise as empty rumour.

Yet, miraculously, the medals keep on coming despite those running boxing’s High Performance programme feeling so utterly disenfranchised from the Board of the IABA.

Next year is Olympic qualifying year and, before we know it, the work in the National Stadium will be our big story for London. Boxing coaches are, to my mind, the most empathetic and emotionally intelligent of people and I suspect that Billy Walsh has the most soothing voice a kid could hear in his corner.

But it’s a voice that may yet be lost to Irish boxing. And, if that happens, let no one feign surprise.

- Vincent Hogan

Irish Independent

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