Performance director Rob McCracken admits GB Boxing’s medal return and the experience gained by a young squad at the World Championships offers great hope in the build up to the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Just over a year on from the London 2012 Olympics, Britain left Almaty with bronze medals for middleweight Anthony Fowler and flyweight Andrew Selby, two more than the equivalent World Championships the year after Beijing 2008.
McCracken cited that comparison in his assessment of his boxers efforts in Kazakhstan and expects results to vastly improved by the time of the next World Championships in Doha the year before the Rio 2016 Olympics.
“It is early days in the Olympic cycle and we arrived with a relatively inexperienced squad, so to come away with two medals from a tough World Championships is a very good outcome and a better result than we achieved at the same point four years ago,” he said.
“Overall, it has been a good learning experience for a lot of the younger boxers and they will be stronger for the experience and go away with a clearer sense of what it takes to become an elite international boxer.
“It will have provided them with an indication of the quality benchmark in international boxing and a better understanding what they need to do to improve when they get back into the gym.”
Fowler was cruelly forced to withdraw from his middleweight semi-final with Zhanibek Alimkhanuly after suffering a hand injury prior to it while Selby lost a narrow last four contest with Jasurbek Latipov – McCracken admitting the latter could have gone either way.
“Andrew Selby has shown once again that he is a top-class boxer and, in only his second major championship, Antony Fowler has demonstrated that he has what it takes to win medals at the highest level so they are the big positives that we can take from the last two weeks,” he added.
“I thought that Andrew Selby was very unlucky and could easily have got the decision after boxing well in all three rounds.”
© Sportsbeat 2013