Castlerea boxers selected for World Championships

Aoife and Lisa O’Rourke have been selected as part of the Irish team that will compete in the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool.

The Castlerea boxers will represent Ireland at the IABA’s inaugural World Boxing event, which will run from September 4-14.

The duo will be aiming to build on their silver medals at the IBA World Championships in Serbia last March.

Aoife will box in the 75KG event while Lisa will compete in the 70KG weight class.

Two time Olympian Michaela Walsh and Paris Olympians Daina Moorehouse (51kg), Jenny Lehane (54kg), Grainne Walsh (65kg), Dean Clancy (65kg) and Jack Marley (90kg) will all represent Ireland at the event.

National Performance Director, Jon Mackey, will lead the team in Liverpool in the first benchmark championships since his appointment in April. He says “This is a red-letter event for Irish Boxing, our first World Boxing World Championships. The selected team is awash with talent and potential – some boxers are veterans of international benchmark competition and for others, it will be their first outing at this level.

“The squad has been in training and evaluation in the High Performance Unit since mid-June, working with our coaching team of Zauri Antia, Damian Kennedy, Eoin Pluck, Lynne McEnery and James Doyle, and engaging with Sport Science Medical practitioners in the Institute of Sport – it’s coaches and practitioners of this calibre that make the difference at World level.” 

Team Ireland will, as part of continued preparation for the World Championships, participate in a multi-nations training camp at the GB Boxing base in Sheffield, in the last two weeks in August.