THE GOLD RUSH
Medals, Milestones… and Arnold Schwarzenegger
An Olympic preview by Jessica Sinyard
The competition was fierce long before the Games have even begun. Vibrant would-be hosts in the intimidating shape of New York, Paris, Moscow, and Madrid, all jostling for their chance to welcome the world and the grand sporting spectacle that is the Olympic Games. Sorry, world, but this one’s got our name on it. London was elected to host the 2012 Olympic Games and will welcome elite athletes from all over the world. With the presence of the dedicated, dazzling amateurs of Team GB boxing, it is not mere optimism to expect our strong prospects to make a lasting impression, sending a global message that attests to the current quality and calibre of British amateur boxing. To qualify for an Olympic event in any discipline is a staggering accomplishment, but the added dimension of representing the host nation is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Olympic boxing in 2012 will feature 10 men’s weight categories, from Light Flyweight (46-49kg) to Super Heavyweight (over 91kg) and will be joined by a women’s competition for the first time in the sport’s 108 year Olympic history. Ironically for those who consider the decision a break in tradition, the Olympic Games has a strong tradition and commitment to advancing the participation of women in events. As recently as the year 2000, for example, the Sydney Olympics welcomed women into the weightlifting competition for the first time. In 1992, the same was true of judo, with earlier landmarks still for the marathon, 800m track and field, equestrian dressage, showjumping, rowing, and a number of others. To date, the Olympics has repeatedly been true to its word.
Perhaps the most recent indication of the depth of talent now present in the GB squad was earlier in April this year, when the team flourished at the Gee Bee tournament in Helsinki winning seven medals in all – three gold, two silver and two bronze, with highly promising GB bantamweight Luke Campbell named Boxer of the Tournament.
The event rounded off an exceptionally successful week for GB boxing, which had also seen brothers Khalid and Gamal Yafai winning the gold and bronze medals respectively at the Felix Stamm Memorial Tournament in Poland. Khalid Yafai (flyweight) is a 2008 Beijing Olympian and 2010 European Championships silver medallist, and his bantamweight brother Gamal has also accumulated a wealth of amateur experience and medals. Poland saw a strong performance from Gamal but ultimately a tough break, as he lost out to Ireland’s John Joe Nevin by a single point in the semi finals.
The GB bantamweights can currently be considered a highly competitive division with Yafai flanked by Andrew Selby, gold medallist at the Bocskai Memorial Tournament in Hungary 2010, and 2008 European Champion Luke Campbell who hails from glorious, sunny, underrated Hull (alright, that is my neck of the woods), named in 2009 as the Ken Jones Amateur Boxer of the Year, largely in recognition of his achievement of becoming the first British European Champion since 1961. (Some readers may recall that a year earlier, the recipient of the same award was Olympic Gold medallist and currently hotly discussed pro, James DeGale.)
The achievements of the remaining GB squad divisions are no less numerous and impressive. Featherweights Martin Ward (2009 European Youth Championships) and Iain Weaver (2010 European Championships) have Gold and Silver medals between them, while gifted lightweight Tom Stalker, winner of both the 2010 Olympic Athlete of the Year (BOA) and Amateur Boxer of the Year (Boxing Writers Club), established himself as perhaps the prime lightweight candidate in Britain when he won the Gold medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where fellow GB boxer Simon Vallily (heavyweight) also won a gold medal. Despite arguably being one of the most tumultuous in recent memory (corruption scandals, squalid accommodation, and dodgy scales, anyone?) the Commonwealth Games in Delhi was a remarkable triumph in the face of adversity for team GB, not only considering the success of Stalker and Vallily, but also with squad boxers Bradley Saunders, Callum Smith, and Anthony Ogogo all returning home with silver medals.
The achievements of the remaining squad – Scott Cardle, Warren Baister, Obed Mbwakongo, Tommy Stubbs, Fred Evans, and Danny Price – consisting in total of a two-time ABA champion, double EU Championship bronze medallist, EU Championship gold medallist, and 2010 Commonwealth Boxing Championship Gold medallist – all bolster what amounts to an impressive (and truly intimidating) roster of British talent for 2012.
The ranks are further enriched by the presence of the women’s prospects who will compete at three weights in 2012: Flyweight (48-51kg), Lightweight (56-60kg), and middleweight (69-75kg). They will have just one chance to qualify in May 2012 at the Women’s World Championships, and flying the flag for the females in the squad are some remarkable athletes. Natasha Jonas, a four-time ABA Champion and Gold medallist from the 2009 EU Championships in Bulgaria (where she notably beat her rival squad member Amanda Coulson in the quarter final stage) fights at lightweight with fellow squad members Ruth Raper and the aforementioned Coulson, a three-time ABAE National Champion who recently racked up the highest number of points at the GB training camp and boxing tournament in Crete, where fellow squad member Nicola Adams (flyweight) also impressed and won a gold medal.
The top ten fighters in each division – meaning the eight quarterfinalists and the two boxers of the top sixteen eliminated by the eventual winner and runner up – will all qualify
Adams herself is a two-time AIBA Women’s World Championship silver medallist (2008, 2010) and became the first English female boxer to earn a medal in a major tournament when she picked up the Silver medal in the 2007 European Championships in Denmark. Flyweights Nina Smith and Lynsey Holdaway, and the only female middleweight in the squad Savannah Marshal round off the staunch female prospects with Marshal having won a silver medal at the 2010 AIBA Women’s World Championships in Barbados. Considering that the acceptance and addition of women’s boxing is a relatively young one, the considerable success and array of accolades our athletes have already achieved seems all the more commendable.
The first qualifying event for the Games is a mere five months from the time of writing in April, beginning in September of this year with the World Amateur Championships in Azerbaijan. There is everything to fight for with quarterfinalists automatically snagging their Olympic place. The top ten fighters in each division – meaning the eight quarterfinalists and the two boxers of the top sixteen eliminated by the eventual winner and runner up – will all qualify. For heavyweight and super heavyweight contenders, the process is slightly different with only the top six boxers qualifying for the Games. The second qualifier is scheduled to take place in Istanbul in the spring of 2012.
It is worth noting that as hosts of the Games, Team GB is also subject to some special conditions. We have, for example, a reserve of five places for the men’s divisions should team GB qualify fewer than five boxers in Azerbaijan. In which case, the team would then nominate its reserved weight categories before the European tournament. Selection would normally have rested on the respected, capable shoulders of Rob McCracken, but a recent controversial decision handed down from on high (AIBA) has meant McCracken has had his license revoked due to his links with the professional ranks. The full impact is still being felt by the squad in stages, with Khalid Yafai recently commenting in his Boxing News blog (BoxingNewsOnline.net, 15-04-11) that he and McCracken had a ‘good relationship’, and crediting McCracken with teaching him ‘how to be so professional in everything [he] does’. But should we fail to qualify further boxers in the second competition in Europe, the team would then be permitted to allocate boxers into the previously selected weight categories. (The women from Team GB are also granted the reserve of one place.) Fortunately, the format of the Games themselves are significantly simpler, where the winners of two semi-finals in each weight category will fight for the Gold Medal, with the losing boxers of the two semi-finals each awarded a Bronze.
With Britain’s big day drawing ever nearer (not that one; the Royal Wedding will mercifully be but a distant memory by the time of publication), enthusiasm and publicity for London 2012 are due to go into joyous overdrive. The internet, as ever, is saturated with useful (and useless) information, with the intriguing addition of the Games’ own YouTube channel, London2012. It is here, in fact, that the ever-colourful Arnold Schwarzenegger can be heard in his brief interview as rightly calling the Olympic Games the ‘ultimate sports competition’, where athletes ‘do the impossible’ and set an inspiring example for the rest of the world ‘to participate in sport and fitness’. Arnie adds that people can be tempted to become ‘couch potatoes… sitting around’, and presently completing this article in bed with tea and toast, this writer can hardly differ. But perhaps even more persuasive is Mr Schwarzenegger’s belief that London has the opportunity to create a truly ‘historic Olympic Games’. With london2012.org currently running the statistics as 26 Olympic sports in 34 venues, 10,500 Olympic athletes, 20,000 press and media and more than 9 million tickets – never was a truer word spoken.
