There was double delight for Richmond boxer Lydia Stewart-McDonald at the national amateur championships in Whanganui last week.<\/p>\n
Not only did the welterweight win gold in the elite 65kg class but she was adjudged the best female fighter at the tournament.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old, from Dixon\u2019s Boxing Gym, beat familiar rival Ericka Stark in her first bout and then faced Renee Doole in the final.<\/p>\n
Renee had previously won two youth titles at the nationals and represented New Zealand at the Oceania Champs.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t count for much on Saturday as Lydia, competing under the Te Tai Poutini banner, totally dominated the three-round bout with the Hawke\u2019s Bay boxer.<\/p>\n
She knocked her opponent down twice on her way to winning a unanimous points decision.<\/p>\n
Lydia\u2019s first defeat in her career had come at the nationals last year, making her even more determined to go all the way this time.<\/p>\n
That took her record to 15 wins from 17 fights.<\/p>\n
Her success in the ring follows recent acknowledgement out of it.<\/p>\n
She received the Prime Minister\u2019s Oranga Tamariki Award, which recognises young New Zealanders who have achieved success and demonstrated strong potential despite significant challenges or adversity.<\/p>\n
Lydia will travel to Wellington in December to receive the accolade.<\/p>\n
Her clubmates also fared well in Whanganui.<\/p>\n
Ezra Luamanu reached the final of the Junior Male 80+kg division in just his eighth fight.<\/p>\n
The teenager lost a split points decision to the more experienced Aucklander, Jireh Brown.<\/p>\n
And Ashley Belk claimed the elite 51kg title unopposed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was double delight for Richmond boxer Lydia Stewart-McDonald at the national amateur championships in Whanganui last week.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":925116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-925115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=925115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/925116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}