OLYMPICS:JOHN JOE Nevin danced and feinted. He switched from orthodox to southpaw. He hit going backwards and lunging onto the front foot. He scored on the counter, flicking in blows and he scored with some big right hands and left hooks. The bantamweight was yesterday both playing down his performance and inflating John Joe Nevin, writes JOHNNY WATTERSONin London.
It has been Nevin’s way to understate what happens in the ring until medals begin to chime. It has also been his way to talk big about the other persona, the other John Joe Nevin.
“I met Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy, which is always nice,” he said of life in the Athlete’s Village. “And they saw John Joe Nevin of course. I’m just hoping to meet the two Williams sisters and get a picture with them. They’d be heroes of mine. And I met Nadal at the last Olympics. He’d be another hero of mine.”
What is it about the Williams sisters Nevin was asked. Still dripping from his nine minutes with Kazak boxer Kanat Abutalipov, he demurred.
“We won’t say that for the newspapers,” he quipped
The tennis lovin’ boxer has been looking good in his first two outings. He now meets Mexico’s Oscar Fierro Valdez on Sunday evening with the winner taking the bronze medal. “We’re not concerned, just staying in the moment,” said head coach Billy Walsh. That has been the mantra but the more people see of Nevin this week the more they like. He travelled to Beijing as an 18-year-old but since then has won medals in two World Championships and considerably toughened up in the World Boxing Series, a professional off-shoot of the amateur game. The maturing process has injected Nevin with patience and self-belief. He has never shied away from his ambition to fight in the professional ranks and London 2012 may be his last shot at a medal.
“I can go all the way. I honestly believe that. I wouldn’t be in the competition if I didn’t think I could go all the way,” he said. “I was nearly beaten in the senior semi-finals because of a bad performance. And I got beat twice out in France.
“I was talking to Billy, thinking about whether or not I’d go to the Olympics. And now I’m one fight away from being in the semi-final. It shows you what I can change if I think about what I’m doing and go in there and perform.”
Nevin could have found himself in trouble had his movement not made him elusive for the opening two rounds. As he swayed around Abutalipov chased after him but he rarely cut off the ring, Nevin’s superior footwork and spatial awareness turning the fight into an occasional pursuit.
Picking off shots Nevin led 5-2 after three minutes, which prompted the Kazak to go after him harder. Sometimes jogging Abutalipov appeared frustrated from Nevin’s unwillingness for contact.
Instead the Irishman kept his distance landing some big rights and countering his opponent each time his defence opened up. Nevin was patient enough to wait for openings and he did it from a distance, again, declining to go to war with a tough opponent and ending the round 10-5 up before winning 15-10. “Yeah we were practising those left hooks, swivelling off with the left hooks and clipping the right hook into the body and teasing him with the jab and bringing him on and it worked. Maybe not in the first half of the first round but he did come in then. As Billy had said when we were practising ‘he will have to come eventually’ when you keep picking him with simple shots and I went into pick him with the simple shots. I’m delighted with my performance.”
Nevin will unwind talking to his room-mate and captain Darren O’Neill who fights this afternoon. Once again members of the Irish team were in the ExCel to support. Paddy Barnes was speaking to Minister for Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar, replete with Ireland tracksuit, while Adam Nolan was also putting a shoulder to the wheel.
There is a tight knit feeling to this group and that all are still in the draw only strengthens that team mentality. “When there’s not much happening his feinting stops your man from scoring and then he throws in these shots, easily,” Walsh said of Nevin. “He saves himself hardship. That’s why he hasn’t got a crooked nose like me.”
SOME OF us measure an Olympic moment by how long it takes the bus to get there, and others measure it by a lifetime. Eoin Rheinisch had that look on his face, his entire lifetime up to that point now lost in the moment, as if really there was nothing else after it, writes
IAN O'RIORDAN
in London.
He had that look on his face too that said yes, ask him how it feels, and then get the next bus out of there. Here was a moment we would never understand – his career-defining moment, snapped apart, just like putting scissors to a string.
It's what happens in the canoe slalom, when you miss a gate, and all the white water in the world won't allow you to catch up. It's what happened to Rheinisch, at gate 19, in his kayak semi-final, the 50-point penalty effectively killing his chances of even getting into the final run, and with that any hope of a medal.
So the moment begins, the one no Olympic competitor ever willingly looks past, and for a sport as lonesome and unyielding as this, one Rheinisch can't begin to comprehend. All he understands for now is it was not supposed to end like this.
That moment, sitting on the bank by the foaming water, watching the remaining canoes passing by; that moment four years ago, when Rheinisch sat and watched the remaining canoes snatch away his Olympic medal, almost certainly replaying in his head. The moment he, or anyone who witnessed it, won't easily forget.
"I don't know. It's a cruel sport," he began, when asked how he'd get back in the boat after this, and when his eyes welled up it was time to move towards the bus – leave the Kildare man alone, and lost.
He'd lured a strong Irish presence out to the Lee Valley, and rightly so, his heat run last Sunday suggesting he'd be in the medal hunt, especially in an event where so much does and can go wrong, even for the red-hot favourites. In the end it went very badly wrong for him, the penalty leaving him with a score of 153.98 and 14th of the 15 men on the day.
"In shock, really," is what he said, with the ghostly face to prove it. "And devastated. I still can't believe that it came down to something like that."
At 32, after a lifetime in the sport, Rheinisch had made the most costly error of his career, accidentally, like a martyr, his boat actually scraping the bottom of the white water rapids, everything up to that point having gone to plan.
"I just set out there to do a really measured, controlled run. I wasn't going to take any risks out there, for the semi-final. I got down to that last move, and when I went to turn the back of the boat in, the very back of the boat hit the bottom of the course, essentially – hit either an obstacle or the actual bottom surface of the course.
"When you're turning that way, and it hits the bottom, it just sends you straight on. It just stops you doing the turn where you need to go, and I just went straight on and got swept away.
"It's an unusual one, because I was so far from the bank, in one of those big pools, and I never even thought it could be a possibility, walking the course before."
He couldn't even recall the last time he'd missed a gate, one of the reasons why he sat and watched the other canoes, trying to make sense of why he'd got it so wrong.
"Ah, it was torture, but I think it was more to confirm to myself that the strategy was right, that it wasn't one of these things where you had to go and take risks. Strategy-wise, it was right. It was a technical course, but I'm not going to get at the course designers, or anything like that. It was a really nice course to paddle."
No consolation then, not even the fading memories of Beijing: "This is much worse. Four years ago, coming fourth, was tough, but at the same time there was some sense of achievement. Whereas here, it's devastating, absolutely devastating. I can't believe it."
No consolation in that the end result still went largely as predicted, the Italian Daniele Molmenti celebrating his 28th birthday, with the only title he lacked in the sport.
No consolation either in that Rheinisch couldn't have prepared any better, or have been better funded, the €40,000 the Irish Sports Council have put into him every year since Beijing, and all the funding too going back to 2001 – but also the countless hours of pain and perspiration. So that in the end there's no way of measuring the time and investment lost in the water in that moment at gate 19.
Next in the ring
Today: Last 16 (1.30pm session) 75kg Middleweight: Darren O'Neill (Ire) v Stefan Haertel (Ger).
Aug 3rd: Last 16 (8.30pm session)– 52kg Flyweight: Michael Conlan (Ire) v Duke Akeuth Micah (Ghana). 69kg Welterweight: Adam Nolan (Ire) v Andrey Zamkovoy (Rus).
Aug 4th: Last 16 (1.30pm session) – 49kg Light-flyweight: Paddy Barnes (Ire) v Thomas Essomba (Cam).
Aug 5th: Quarter- final (8.30pm session)– 56kg Bantamweight: John Joe Nevin (Ire) v Oscar Fierro Valdez (Mex).
Aug 6th: Quarter-final (1.30pm session) – 60kg Lightweight: Katie Taylor (Ire) v Queen Underwood (USA) or Natasha Jonas (Brit).
