COLCHESTER light-middleweight Lewis Richardson will be an Olympian if he wins his next fight.
Richardson faces Angel Gabriel Llanos Perez (Puerto Rico) in the Boxing Road to Paris Olympic qualifier in Bangkok on Friday morning (10.30 am GMT) with the prize winning a spot at this summer's Olympics.
Great Britain boxers Delicious Orie (super-heavyweight), Pat Brown (heavyweight), Charley Davison (bantamweight), Chantelle Reid (middleweight) and Rosie Eccles (welterweight) were successful.
Delicious Orie (blue) of Team England competes with Sagar Sagar (red) of Team India during the Boxing Over 92kg (Super Heavyweight) Gold Medal Bout (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Getty Images).
Richardson is nine minutes away from joining them and Ireland's Aidan Walsh is also set to qualify at 71kgs after defeating 2021 world champion Yuri Zakharieiev, his third win in four days.
Walsh, who won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, will face Zeyad Eashash (Jordan) on Friday at the Olympic venue. If beaten, Richardson and Walsh will get another shot at qualifying.
The four losers in the quarter-finals will meet, the winners will go to Paris. Richardson proved to be a surprising package deal. He didn't make his debut at 71kgs until last December, when he won gold at the Algarve Box Cup in Portugal.
Richardson was campaigning at 75kgs, taking bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022 at middleweight before taking a 366-day break to focus on his studies.
Richardson said Debate News his frustration after the 75kgs weight class was removed from the Paris Games and, at just 6ft 3ins tall, he was expected to move up to 80kgs in his pursuit of an Olympic berth.
Instead he dropped to 71kgs and three wins in three days at the Algarve Box Cup put him in contention for Olympic qualification.
Richardson went on to reach the final of the Boxing World Cup: GB Open in Sheffield in January, in the absence of 2022 European Champion Harris Akbar, who was ruled out through injury.
Richardson made an early exit from the Olympic qualifiers in Italy in March, but Great Britain's coaches stuck with him for the Bangkok event.
Richardson started off with a unanimous points victory over Brandon Chavez (Honduras) which advanced him to the last 32.
There, he met Kasra Tahmasebi (Iran) and won unanimously again. Tiago Muxanga (Mozambique) was also beaten unanimously to stop Perez.
Great Britain lightweight Amy Broadhurst has only won twice to qualify after back-to-back points wins. Next up for her is a match against Yeonji Oh (Korea) on Friday (3.15pm GMT).
Amy Broadhurst (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)
Source link
