THE WITHDRAWAL of 2016 Olympian Stephen Donnelly form the National Elite Championships has thrown the welterweight division – which includes two Donegal punchers – wide open.
Ballymena’s Donnelly reached the welterweight quarter-finals in Rio, but a chest infection has prevented him from training this week.
Donnelly was the Elite champion in 2014 and had been the favourite to land the crown this time around.
Donnelly noted that he had been ‘very confident’, but now the division has been blown apart with St Johnston’s Brett McGinty among the contenders.
The Oakleaf ABC man is in the Elites for the first time. The eight-time Irish champion from his youth and schoolboys days is reported to be flying in training for his maiden voyage to these Championships.
[adrotate group=”76″]Mark McCole from Dungloe reached the semi-finals of the Under-22 Championships and has stepped up a weight. McCole and McGinty will be in the welterweight draw tomorrow in Dublin.
McGinty was a silver medalist at the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games. Fellow medalists from those Games, Aidan Walsh and Tiernan Bradley, are also in at welterweight for the Elites, which begin tomorrow night at the National Stadium.
Illies Golden Gloves light-flyweight Darryl Moran will aim to add to his Under-22 title of last week while Carrigart’s Maeve McCarron is the sole entrant for the Women’s 81kgs+ category.
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