LAST UPDATE | 11 Mar
GRÁINNE WALSH WILL need to try again to qualify for the Olympics after suffering an agonising and controversial 3-2 split-decision defeat to Poland’s Aneta Rygielska at the quarter-final stage of the penultimate qualifying event in Busto Arsizio, Italy.
But Tullamore’s Walsh, who was just one win away from punching her ticket to Paris, will first need to be selected ahead of world champions Amy Broadhurst and Lisa O’Rourke for May’s final qualifier in Bangkok, and she’ll feel rightly aggrieved that the matter hasn’t been settled already.
Instead, Walsh was the victim of wild judging as Rygielska sneaked her way into this summer’s Games.
Walsh began this light-middleweight (66kg) bout as the aggressor and, after a tight round, three of the five judges preferred Rygielska’s backfoot, box-and-move output — which was fair enough.
The controversy unfolded in the second round, however. Trailing 3-2, Walsh upped the ante and looked to ragdoll the Pole. Her come-forward pressure began to off when Rygielska received a point deduction — to be applied to the final scores — for persistent holding, and it paid dividends again when a thumping Walsh right hand forced a standing count of her opponent.
However, despite a dominant round for Walsh, only two of the judges awarded it her way, with judges from Norway, Morocco and Argentina feeling Rygielska had done enough to take it despite her repeated infractions and standing count.
With the application of the point deduction to follow at the final bell, Walsh was still ostensibly leading on four of the five judges’ scorecards entering the last.
Like the first, the final round was a close encounter in which Walsh attempted to apply pressure and Rygielska boxed from her bike.
Walsh won it on three of the five cards.
When the point deduction was applied to Rygielska, that left two scores of 29-27 to the Irishwoman from the judges from Norway and Sri Lanka. But it meant that the judges from Italy, Morocco and Argentina all had it level at 28 apiece.
In such an event that a majority of judges score a bout level, those same judges must pick an overall winner. The Italian, Moroccan and Argentinian judges all chose Rygielska, who took a 3-2 split decision and progressed to Paris past the heartbroken Walsh.
Meanwhile, Jude Gallagher, the Tyrone featherweight, booked his passage to the Olympics with a 5-0 unanimous decision win over Turkmenistan’s Sukur Owezow.
57kg Jude Gallagher booking that #Paris2024 berth
— IABA (@IABABOXING) March 11, 2024
📸 @Tararobins pic.twitter.com/dFAvcLQAwU
Gallagher knocked his opponent down in the first, handed him a standing eight in the second and, despite being well ahead, showed no mercy in going after the finish in the last round.
Waterford light-heavy (81kg) Kelyn Cassidy missed out on qualification, with a 3-2 split decision in favour of world champion Nurbek Oralbay of Kazakhstan.
Ireland have six boxers qualified for the Games, as Gallagher joined Kellie Harrington, Michaela Walsh, Aoife O’Rourke, Dean Clancy, and Jack Marley on the list of Irish fighters qualified for the Games.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” said Gallagher. “Words can’t explain what it feels like. Ever since I started boxing, and started to progress, I wanted to box at the Olympic Games. It was always in sight but now that it’s actually come true, and I’ve booked my ticket to Paris, it’s absolutely unbelievable. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the feeling.”
