THERE has never been a more tumultuous road to an Olympics. The Tokyo Games were postponed for a year and now the European qualification event, suspended mid tournament in March 2020, picks up from where it left off. It restarts June 4, running until June 8, at Le Grand Dôme in Villebon-sur-Yvette on the outskirts of Paris, France. The restructuring of the qualifying process, enforced by the coronavirus pandemic, means that there won’t be a second one. The World event, for those who hadn’t qualified through their continent, had to be cancelled. It means those remaining Olympic quota places will be allocated simply on the Boxing Task Force’s world ranking system. For the boxers most highly ranked within their continent that is good news, they are likely to be granted a place at the Games through that second wave of allocations. But for those who do not already have a high world ranking, everything comes down to this qualifier. Some will only have this one chance in France to win a place at Tokyo.
GB have several boxers going into must-win bouts at this event. At 63kgs, just over a year ago, Luke McCormack was doing his final preparations for his Olympic qualification bout, only for the tournament to be cancelled the night before. Now after this long hiatus, he’ll go straight into a contest with Turkey’s Tugrul Erdemir. All is on the line for him, win it and he’ll be through to the quarter-finals and an assured place at the Olympic Games. George Bates will compete for Ireland in this division.