Ashbourne's Lehane and Bobbett going for glory in Serbia
BOXING
OLYMPIAN Jennifer Lehane is hopeful that a recent 10-day training camp in China has Ireland’s top female boxers, including her fellow Ashbourne woman Judy Bobbett, in medal-winning shape for next week’s World Championships in Serbia (9th to 17th March), writes Cliona Foley.
China established itself as the sport’s superpower at last Summer’s Olympic Games, winning three golds and two silvers in the six female weight classes in Paris.
Some of their medallists were among the fighters with Ireland traded punches on last month's historic first ever training camp in China.
Bobbett missed out on the China trip because of injury, but is ready for action in Serbia.
China's 54kg champ Yuan Chang, who beat Lehane on her Olympic debut, was not involved but Lehane got to fight China’s 50kg champion.
“We trained and stayed in their Olympic Training centre in Beijing and the quality of the sparring was world class. That’s 100 % why we were there,” she said.
“Obviously their number ones were brilliant but even their number twos and threes were top class. I got four really high quality spars and it was such great experience.”
The 26-year-old Meath bantamweight is part of a high quality eight-woman Irish team that departed for Serbia on Thursday and will discover their draws on Saturday.
It includes four other Paris Olympians - Daina Moorehouse, Michaela Walsh, Gráinne Walsh and Aoife O’Rourke – plus Lisa O’Rourke (a 2022 world champion) as well as European u-23 silver medallist Carleigh Irving and former Irish rugby international and Meath Ladies GAA goalkeeper Bobbett, making her debut at 81kg.
This is Irish boxing’s first major test since Paris which, apart from Kellie Harrington’s brilliant title defence, proved underwhelming and was also dogged by some contentious judging.
But Lehane, a former European medallist at Taekwondo who switched to boxing when she went to university, said she had no major hangover from it.
“I had a really positive experience in Paris. I lost against the Chinese in my first round but I was happy with my performance. I felt my warm-up, my tactics, everything was right, it was just down to her (superior) experience. Now I’m working towards getting lots more fights and with different kinds of opponents.”
Speaking at a launch for Chadwicks, Lehane admitted she did suffer some of the immediate post-Olympic mood slump that athletes often speak of but had an ideal antidote.
She quit her job as a primary school teacher to train full-time for Paris but now fits in substitute teaching in her native Ashbourne whenever boxing allows.
“The Olympics were such a high. There were a few weeks afterwards that I was just like crying ‘I can't believe it's over’ but I was able to chat to the other girls, and I also think going back to work and being around the kids really helped me get through that.
“If I was ever having a bad day, it was almost like the kids knew. They'd come up to me, asking me questions about Paris and telling me about where they were when they watched me and that all really helped.”
Boxing’s Olympic future is in jeopardy due to the ongoing rift between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Boxing Association (IBA) but things took a more positive turn last week when the IOC provisionally recognised ‘World Boxing’, a new global organisation which has already signed up 78 countries.
Asked if she was more positive now that boxing will be in the LA Olympics, Lehane said: “There is a lot of noise out there. I don’t know anything about the politics of it, I just keep my head down and keep training.”