More accolades for Conlan family
By IABA Press Officer Bernard O’Neill
It has been a proud 24 hours for the Conlan family.
John Conlan was yesterday confirmed as the Sport NI High Performance Coach of the Year, and his son Michael was this morning confirmed as Irish Team captain for the AIBA World Men’s Elite Championships and Olympic qualifiers in Doha, Qatar.
Conlan senior helped steer Northern Ireland to two gold, two silver and five bronze medals at the last Commonwealth Games and five medals – three gold and two silver – at the recent Commonwealth Youth Games.
The Ulster chief seconds and Ireland High Performance coach played a pivotal role getting his son and Paddy Barnes over the line for the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Conlan junior and Barnes earned Olympic quota places through the World Series of Boxing (WSB).
The Belfast duo travelled over 30,000 miles into three continents – culminating in a red hot reception in Venezuela in their final outings – in an arduous and testing WSB campaign with Italia Thunder earlier this year.
“It’s a great honour to receive this award and I’m happy that it is highlighting boxing. The club coaches also deserve enormous praise here for all the work they doing with our boxers,” said John Conlan, also father to unbeaten (14-0-0) pro Jamie, who claimed the WBO Inter-Continental super-fly title at Dublin’s National Stadium in July.
