Updated: Wednesday, 3rd February, 2010 5:00pm

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Blaney lands eighth national boxing title

by Jimmy Geoghegan

Christopher Blaney captured gold in the 69kg weight division at the IABA youth championships.

It's back to Baku for Christopher Blaney after he continued his recent impressive form by defeating Chris Mullally from Royston Boxing Club in the final of the 69kg weight division at the National Stadium on Saturday night to claim his eighth title.

The win over Mullally in the IABA Youths Championships completed a double for Blaney and rounded off a memorable weekend which started on Friday night with a resounding 12-1 victory in a semi-final bout against Stephen Broadhurst from the Dealgan club, Dundalk.

Jonathan Carroll from the St Seachnall's club Dunshaughlin also won his semi-final bout against Paul Kelly from the Twinstowns club in Donegal on a 5-4 scoreline on Friday night. Twenty four hours later he was less fortunate when he came up against an in-form Michael O'Reilly from the Portlaoise club and lost out.

Navan Boxing Club member Blaney has now earned a place on the Irish team that will take part in the AIBA World Youths Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan in April. Blaney, who is a student at O'Carolan College, Nobber is already familiar with Baku having boxed there in a tournament last year.

If Blaney does well in Azerbaijan he could earn a place in the Irish squad for the Junior Olympics in Singapore in August.

On Friday night Blaney indicated that he was on form when he raced into a commanding lead against Broadhurst.

He was also helped by the fact that the bout was not completed as Broadhurst was disqualified in the third round for persistent holding and after he had received three warnings.

Whatever reserves of energy Blaney retained he used to good effect the following night for the final against Mullally in what proved to be a cagey, close encounter that finished 2-0 in favour of the Meath boxer.

"It was a very technical bout as the two boxers know each other very well, they sparred with each other in the high performance programme so they knew well what each were capable of producing. The 2-0 scoreline might suggest it was very boring, but is was a very technical contest," said Neil Blaney Christopher's father who also manned the young boxer's corner at the weekend along with Richie Meade.

"There was no burgers, curries or chips for Christopher on Friday night, it was straight to bed after his bout, but we did have party on Saturday night."

Next up for Christopher Blaney is a series of tournaments in various parts of Europe that are designed to give boxer's international experience ahead of the world championships.

"There are tournaments planned for Germany, Latvia or Lithuania and Azerbaijan and we would expect that he would be going to at least two of those," added Neil Blaney.

George Gibney, who is normally in Christopher Blaney's corner on fight-night, was unable to make it to the National Stadium at the weekend as he brought a group of young Navan boxer's to a tournament in Oughterard, Co Galway.

The Navan BC travelling party included Charlie McGarry, Neil Kane, Warren Lacey, Neville Giles, Liam O'Donnell, Jamie Woods and Blake Lacey. Three of the Navan boxers won their contests, Giles won the 'boxer-of-the-tournament' award.