Olympic, world and European medallists take centre stage for the Irish boxing finals

It is difficult to know what to say to Kellie Harrington, Amy Broadhurst and Aoife O’Rourke. A European, world and Olympic Champion, a world and European Champion, and a twice European champion will light up the National Stadium today. But few, other than those who come along, will see them perform.

Television has again held its nose to the sport, leaving boxing consigned to its beneath stairs place of “only during the Olympic Games”. Boxing for women, despite its recent unprecedented success, is almost invisible to the greater public.

As women in sport continue to struggle for recognition, most people in Ireland have never seen the best and most successful boxers the country has produced – unless they watch Katie Taylor’s professional career progress, usually late on a Saturday night on pay-for-view DAZN or Sky Sports.

Those that have an interest in Olympic boxing feel it as less a surprise and more a commentary on what decision makers feel the public wish to see. Between Harrington and Broadhurst, medals aside, the pair have won numerous Sports Woman of the Year awards.

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Outside the ring Harrington’s recent biography followed the post London 2012 memoir of Katie Taylor, when it won the 2022 Irish Sports Book of the Year.

Since its inception in 2007 as the An Post Irish Book Awards, the only women athletes to have won are Mayo Gaelic footballer Cora Staunton, Taylor and Harrington.

GAA gets airtime. But in the other corner boxing has grown into the category of “put me on the Late Late Show” but don’t show the reason why I’m actually appearing.

But it doesn’t stop with the champions in the National Stadium. Light flyweight Caitlin Friars, who won a silver medal at last Year’s European Championships is competing as is Christina Desmond, also a light middleweight European silver medallist.

Belfast’s Michaela Walsh is a twice European bronze medallist and Commonwealth Games champion and in the men Dylan Eagleson, a young bantamweight from Bangor at 19 years old, won the European silver medal last year. The southpaw is another Irish hope for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024.

Gabriel Dossen, the talented Ivory Coast born 23-year-old European middleweight champion, however, is a notable absentee from the draw.

The championships can, however, be seen off Broadway on the TG4 YouTube channel and those who decide to forgo the colourful exploits of medieval Scottish hero William Wallace in Braveheart, will understand the Olympic Games undercurrents of this year’s Irish tournament finale.

It is the beginning of the path towards Paris 2024 and the boxers are lining up the weight divisions in which they wish to compete.

The difficulty is that world and European Championships have more categories and more athletes than the six women’s places and seven men’s reserved in the Olympic Games, meaning that for the Paris Olympics there are more boxers for less places.

In that transaction Harrington will hope to travel to the Olympic venue at Roland Garros and become the first Irish boxer to defend an Olympic title at lightweight. She faces Zara Breslin from Tramore in the final of the 60kg division to take the first step along that path, firstly towards a World Championships event in India in March.

That event, which will bring Ireland’s Bernard Dunne back into the international scene as head of Indian boxing, is followed in the summer by the European Games in Poland, which is also an Olympic qualifier.

Outcomes today will largely reflect who travels to those events with the Irish team.

With Harrington in at 60kg, Broadhurst has moved up to the Olympic weight of 66kg and there she faces former Shamrock Rovers football player, Gráinne Walsh of Spartacus. For last year’s world and European champion, that means a strategy of carefully adding the kilos from her 60-63kg natural weight range.

Just before Christmas that was the main detail occupying Broadhurst’s mind.

“I was just speaking to Zaur [Antia, Irish coach] about what way my options could go, just trying to figure everything out so I don’t make the wrong decision,” she said.

“I have to do what’s best for me. It’s just a sh***y situation because 60kg is my weight. I’d like to do 60kg but I don’t know if Kellie will box or not in the elites. She’ll enter all right but I don’t know if she’ll box. Even if we box there are going to be assessments and they are behind closed doors. So, it’s a long road. I’m confident in myself on winning the 66kg in the elites and going to the Olympics.”

Castlerea’s O’Rourke, the double middleweight European Champion and part of last year’s Irish team that won seven medals at the championships in Montenegro, faces Aoibhe Carabine from Mayo’s Geesala BC in the 75kg.

The ongoing story is what weight younger sister Lisa will decide. Her injured hand was in a cast before Christmas and she is not figuring today. But as the reigning light middleweight World Champion from last year in Istanbul, what weight the sisters decide for Olympic participation will be closely watched.

In the 50kg division Caitlin Fryers, a silver medallist in last year’s European Championships and from Belfast’s famous Immaculata club, faces a difficult opponent in Enniskerry’s Diana Moorehouse.

From the same town as Taylor, Bray, Moorehouse at 15 won gold in the 2017 European Youth Boxing Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria and was seen as one of the rising stars in boxing.

Expected to be one of the bouts of the night, Moorehouse is also a two-time senior champion and proved as much by beating European Championship bronze medallist from last year, Shannon Sweeney, a few weeks ago.

It will be an important bout for the pair. A proven medal winner Fryers against a boxer whose career path always had the Paris Olympic Games on its trajectory, it could be a defining moment for both.

Defeat Fryers and the talented Moorehouse will have a strong case for representing Ireland at the upcoming international tournaments, although as with all the weight divisions a win does not always mean automatic passage.

Michaela Walsh, who along with brother Aidan were the first brother and sister to qualify for an Olympic Games in Tokyo, faces Naas boxer Kelsey Leonard.

Aidan came away with a bronze medal in Tokyo but could not take part in the next bout because of an ankle injury. An Olympic medal of any colour has eluded Michaela, a proven podium boxer at Commonwealth and European level and again that journey begins in Dublin.

Desmond is another, for now, caught between Olympic weights. The Dungarvan Guard takes on Tiffany O’Reilly of the Defence Forces at 70kg between the Paris 2024 categories of 66kg and 75kg.

St Paul’s boxer Eagleson meets Jorge Rogla Castanno from Corinthians at 54kg. Despite an occasional tendency to showboat, Eagleson is both an effective and highly watchable performer.

With his European medal from last year from his first senior tournament, he is the favourite to emerge as Irish champion and like Broadhurst having to move up to welterweight, Eagleson’s 54kg division contest is not an Olympic weight.

At some stage in his Olympic pathway, he will have to move down to 51kg or up to 57kg. In a complex qualification system, that is all ahead.