INTRODUCING – Ireland’s Olympic Boxing Team
Team Ireland fly to Paris on Monday.
The 10 strong team are currently enjoying a well earned break after the latest training camp ended this week. All ten will get in some family before heading off to the Olympic village and getting ready to contest on the greatest stage of all.
Paris 2024 will be only the second time a 10-strong Irish boxing team contested a Games, equaling the record set by the class of 1960, who competed in the Rome Olympics a certain Muhamad Ali won light heavyweight gold in.
Below we run through a very strong team.
50kg Daina Moorehouse; Enniskerry BC
A 4’ 11” pocket-rocket who famously used to rise daily at 6am to train before school, Moorehouse is an underage starlet who has graduated to senior notoriety.
The Wicklow wonder won gold and ‘Best Boxer’ at the European Juniors in 2017 when she was just 15 and has never looked back.
In 2018 the Enniskerry flyweight beat a Russian to clinch the European Youth title and made the quarter-finals of World Youths. The underage medals continued to come and in 2019 she won another European Youth medal (bronze). In 2023 she reached the quarter-finals of European U22s and was deemed unlucky not to get past the same stage at the European Games.
Moorehouse’s senior emergence coincided with the pandemic and her progress was affected accordingly. She dominated domestically but amazing she has yet to win a senior International medal but will look to amend that over the coming weeks.
54kg Jennifer Lehane; DCU Boxing Club
Lehane invested fully in her Olympic dream and it paid off.
She initially starred in Taekwondo, winning two European senior titles and medals at World Junior and Seniors before concentrating on boxing while studying in DCU. A National Elite title in 2021 put her firmly on the IABA High-Performance radar and, just two years ago, she put her primary teaching job on hold to train fulltime. It helped her secure #1 spot in Ireland and set her on the international pathway.
Still the DCU boxer had to overcome setbacks to finally get on the plane to Paris. Lehane was just one win short at last year’s European Championships, beaten by the eventual Bulgarian champion in the quarter-finals. At the first Olympic qualifiers in March she suffered a split decision to France’s Romane Moulai but victories over a Puerto Rican, a Ukrainian and a Hungarian at the final Olympic Qualifiers in Bangkok clinched her qualification.
57kg Michaela Walsh: Holy Family GG, Belfast
One of Ireland’s most underrated sports stars, Michaela Walsh has been winning International medals for Ireland for over a decade.
The Belfast featherweight’s first, a bronze at World Youths in 2011 followed by a flyweight Commonwealth silver in 2014. Walsh put herself in the history books by repeating Commonwealth success in 2018 and 2022.
In 2018 when she also won European Championship bronze, silver was the medal added to the collection at the 2019 European Games. The serial Irish titlist contested the last Olympics but lost in the medal fight.
Bronze at the 2023 European Games – her eighth major medal – also clinched her place in Paris. Walsh and her brother Aidan made history in 2021 as the first sister/brother to ever compete in Olympic boxing and are repeating that achievement in Paris. Both compete at again in France.
60kg Kellie Harrington: St. Mary’s BC, Tallaght
Harrington has already etched her name in Irish sporting folklore.
The Dubliner is one of only three boxers to win gold at the Games – Michael Carruth and Katie Taylor the others. As reigning Olympic 60kg champion she has the chance to become boxing’s first back to back gold medal winner.
Harrington’s is another that has been doing it at the top end of international sport for some time. Her first major was a World silver medal in 2016 (64kg) followed by World title and European bronze at 60kg in 2018 and silver at the 2019 European Games.
Despite the hand injury that delayed her qualification until June 2021 she became Ireland’s third Olympic boxing champion in Tokyo with a unanimous victory over Beatriz Ferreira (Brazil). Since then the St Mary’s BC fighter has added a European title (2022) and European Games gold in 2023 (which clinched her place in Paris) and two Strandja titles in a remarkable three-year, 32-fight winning streak that began in February 2021. The run only ended when the Inner City favourite was beaten by Serbia’s Natalia Shadrina in Belgrade in the semi-finals of the 2024 Europeans, returning with a bronze to bring her major medal tally to date to eight (4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze).
66kg Grainne Walsh: St. Mary’s BC, Tallaght.
Grainne Walsh had to battle hard to get over the qualification line dealing with set back after set back to finally become an Olympian.
That fighting spirit has been apparent throughout her boxing career and ever since she hung up her football boots to concentrate on boxing.
The Offally star was a World and European quarter-finalist as far back as 2016 and eventually won a medal on the international stage, claiming bronze at the 2019 European Games. A thumb injury, which eventually needed surgery, derailed her Tokyo dream but she made sure the Olympic dream was just delayed not dead by reaching Paris.
Battling her way to Irish number 1, Walsh looked to have clinched her Olympic debut at the first qualifiers in Italy this year but was on the wrong end of a split decision and had to go to the final Qualifiers in Thailand in June where she won four fights, beating Armenia’s Ari Hovesepyan to finally secure her ticket to Paris.
75kg Aoife O’Rourke: Castlerea BC
Aoife O’Rourke is Possibly the team’s form fighter and another Irish sporting star who is overlooked outside the realms of boxing.
The Castlerea fighter actually took up boxing to get fitter for inter-county football but quickly emerged as world class puncher, winning silver at her first major (European U22s) in 2018.
The older sister of World champion Lisa O’Rourke has a phenomenal 27-1 record since making her Olympic debut in 2021 where she lost to China’s two-time silver medallist Qian Li in the last 16, her only loss since was to USA’s Naomi Graham in the 2022 World Championships.
This year she won her third consecutive European title in Budapest (2019, 2022 & 2024) and beat Qian Li en route to the prestigious Strandja title in February. The westerner secured early qualification for Paris by winning the 75kg at last year’s European Games in Krakow.
57kg Jude Gallagher: Two Castles Olympic BC
Having emerged from one of the toughest divisions in recent Irish boxing history, Jude Gallagher qualified for his first Olympic Games in March by winning four rounds of the first Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Italy where he had to reach the top four.
A bronze medallist at the World and European Youth Championships in 2018, the Two Castle’s fighter won Commonwealth gold in Birmingham in 2002, beating Joseph Commey in the final but came up against eventual winner Javier Ibanez, a former World Youth champion, at the Year? Europeans.
Gallagher was boxer of the tournament at 2024 National Elite Championships in a particularly stacked featherweight division. His qualification in Milan made him only the second Tyrone boxer to become an Olympian, the first since Tommy Corr fought in Los Angeles 40 years ago.
63.5kg Dean Clancy: Sean McDermott BC
Sligo sensation Dean Clancy Dean Clancy is his county’s first-ever Olympic boxer. The Western talent made history today with victory over Italian champion Gianluigi Malanga at European Games in June 2023.
The Sean McDermott man’s first major success was European junior silver in 2017. A year later he won silver at the European Youths and almost replicated that at the Youth Olympics where he lost a box-off for the single bronze on offer. In 2019, four weeks after turning 18, Clancy won his first Irish senior title. In 2021 the westerner bounced back after a bad bout of Covid to win European U22 gold.
Clancy then contested the 2023 European Games, coming home with bronze and booking his ticket to Paris in the process. This year he made the quarter-finals of the European Championships where he lost to Azerbaijan’s Malik Hasanov.
71kg Aidan Walsh: Holy Family GG, Belfast
One of two Olympic medal winners Walsh was effectively retired this time last year – but now finds himself a two-time Olympian. The Belfast light middleweight first hit the headlines when he won Commonwealth Games silver medallist in 2018.
He’s crowning glory was a Olympic bronze in Tokyo by beating Merven Clair of Mauritius in the quarter-finals but an ankle injury prevented him from contesting the semi-finals.
The Holy Family man’s return to the Olympic stage is remarkable given that he contemplated retirement in the past 12 months. The Matador returned to the HP unit before a camp in Tenerife last November and came through a gruelling final Olympic Qualifier in Thailand in early June where 70 welterweights chased five spots.
92kg Jack Marley: Monkstown BC, Dublin
Jack Marley has been touted as an potential Olympian since he won his first his first All-Ireland title at 11.
The talented heavyweight has proved a fast learner and has been winning titles of note throughout his teens.
In 2021, aged 18, he became the second youngest national heavyweight champion in Irish amateur history. Marley also won a bronze medal at the 2021European U22 Championships and turned that to gold in 2022.
Last year ‘Big Jack’ clinched Olympic qualification by winning silver at the European Games in Krakow where his semi-final victory over Spain’s world bronze medallist Emmanuel Reyes Pla was vital. It not only made him Monkstown BC’s first Olympian but the first Irish heavyweight to win a major international medal in over 60 years.
This year the young fighter won a bronze medallist at Strandja and lost to Belgium’s Victor Schelstraete in a split decision at the European Championships in April.
