DONNA BARR stepped off a plane at Dublin airport the weekend before last and her boxing career received its biggest shot in the arm yet.
The Twin Towns BC light-flyweight, beaten by Lauren Hogan in the Irish Senior final at the end of 2015, was informed by IABA chiefs that she was going to the AIBA World Women’s Championships in Astana.
Last week, Barr, as part of an eight-strong Irish team, flew to Kazakhstan.
Barr competed at senior level for the first time in 2015, reaching the final.
Although beaten by Edenderry’s Hogan in the final, Barr is the Irish representative at the weight for the World Championships.
“I’m so excited,” Barr told Donegal Sport Hub.
“This is why I’ve trained so hard. This is the highest level of boxing I’ll ever be able to compete at.
“It feels like I’m dreaming. I’m away to Kazakhstan with the Irish team. The likes of Katie Taylor, Ceire Smith and Christina Desmond are all looking to qualify for the Olympics. They haves so much experience, they’ve been there and they help keep you calm and focussed.”
Taylor, Smith and Desmond are all vying to book their Olympic tickets this week in Astana.
Barr has been plagued by injury since the turn of the calendar, but is ready for action.
“I’m as ready as I can be,” she said.
[adrotate group=”46″]“I need surgery on the hip injury. It’s just an on-going thing. I’ve been referred for surgery so I’m just waiting on that.
“I’ve worked so, so hard and I’m not going to be happy unless I get back with a medal. This was my first year as a senior. I just have to take it one fight at a time and leave absolutely everything I’ve got in that ring when I step in.”
Barr has had little time to prepare for the trip – just a week, in fact.
She had an inkling when she was selected to travel to a recent two-week training camp at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield; a camp that included boxers from Great Britain, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.
“That was a massive wake-up call,” she recalled.
[adrotate group=”57″]“The standard there was actually just unreal. I got stopped in the first spar of the week – that hadn’t happened since my first ever fight.
“By the end of the week, I was giving as good as I got. When it came to the test on the last day, I felt I could have won it if it had been an actual fight.”
Barr returned to the ring last month when Donegal took on a team from the Boston Boxing Academy. She did three rounds with Amanda Pavone in an exhibition, but felt rusty and off-colour in the Clanree Hotel.
Barr said: “I just couldn’t get going at all. I had no rhythm. I met her the next day and we sparred. It went ten times better.”
Barr is indebted to the work of her coaches at Twin Towns, Shane McHugh and Barry Gillespie.
[adrotate group=”38″]“I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” she said.
“I haven’t stopped training since July, bar two weeks after the Irish Seniors, and I was always ticking over just in case the ‘what if’ happened – and the ‘what if’ did happen!”
Since January, she’s been in the High Performance Unit in Dublin and trained under the likes of John Conlan, Eddie Bolger and Zaur Antia, whom she says has ‘an encyclopaedic knowledge of boxing’.
The likes of Kazakh star Nazym Kyzaibay, who won Gold at flyweight in Jeju two years ago and who has dropped a weight, will be among Barr’s potential opponents.
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