Bernard Dunne resigns as India’s high-performance director before Olympics

Bernard Dunne has resigned as high-performance director with the Boxing Federation of India (BFI), just under 17 months after being hired to improve their fortunes ahead of this summer’s Paris Olympics.

The 44-year-old Dubliner, who had also served as Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) high-performance director for five years before leaving that role in May of 2022, submitted his resignation after all nine Indian boxers failed to secure Paris 2024 quotas from the first Olympic boxing qualifier in Italy last week.

“Bernard Dunne was an integral part of BFI’s set-up but unfortunately, we have to mutually part ways. His resignation was accepted by the committee,” BFI president Ajay Singh said on Monday.

Although Indian boxers had won several international medals under Dunne’s tenure, including four golds at the 2023 Women’s World Championships, six men and two women Indian boxers crashed out in opening rounds of the tournament in Busto Arsizio, Italy, with only Nishant Dev losing in the quarter-finals, a round before the prized Olympic quota.

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For India, with a population of 1.44 billion, boxing is one of their chief Olympic sports: so far only four women have obtained the Olympic quotas for India, all coming at the Asian Games last year, and not a single man.

For Dunne, who won the WBA World Championship in super bantamweight in 2009 and the European Championship in 2007 and guided Team Ireland to two boxing medals in Tokyo, including gold for Kellie Harrington, the decision to take up the Indian role came after he settled an employment dispute with the IABA in 2022.

In late 2021, Dunne filed a complaint with the IABA in which he alleged his position had been undermined in an anonymous letter, discrediting him both personally and professionally.

Ireland has so far qualified six boxers for Paris, Tyrone featherweight Jude Gallagher successful in Italy, where Gráinne Walsh and Kelyn Cassidy narrowly missed out in their deciding bout, adding to Kellie Harrington, Michaela Walsh, Aoife O’Rourke, Dean Clancy and Jack Marley.