Roscommon sisters Lisa and Aoife O’Rourke both battled their way to finals at the European Elite Championships in Bulgaria, guaranteeing themselves at least silver medals.<\/p>\n
Aoife O’Rourke progressed to her 75kg final with a 4-1 victory over Russia’s Saltanat Medenova. The older of the sisters dominated a fight which had a blistering pace and should realistically have been scored 5-0. The outlier judge scored it 30-27 in the Russian’s favour while the other four gave it to O’Rourke on the same scoreline. Aoife will box for her fourth European Championship title against Turkey’s Busra Isildar, a multiple World and European medallist.<\/p>\n
Lisa O’Rourke won her 80kg bout 5-0 against Ukraine’s Iryna Lutsak with all five judges scoring it 30-27. She will take on 2023 world champion, Russia’s Anastasiia Demurchian, in Thursday’s evening session.<\/p>\n
Michaela Walsh secured at least a bronze medal in the 57kg weight class. Walsh stunned the home crowd as she came from behind to earn the win.<\/p>\n
Double Olympian Walsh took on triple Bulgarian Olympian, Stanimira Petrova, in their quarter-final. It was a cagey contest, with the boxers level on four scorecards going into the last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Walsh dominated the third round and came away with a 5-0 decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew coming in this was going to be a tough fight, but for this tournament I\u2019ve really started to believe in myself, to trust in myself,” said Walsh.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve been around the world and done it so many times and I think I can be my hardest critic sometimes. I just wanted to believe in myself. I know I can get performances like that all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan was to win the first round. I came back, I was down, but I think watching Jude and Aoife as well when they had been down and they just put it on. I think I had a brilliant second round.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could see her blowing a wee bit. I knew she was tired and I knew I was fit. I said to myself before I went in, \u2018I\u2019m not leaving Bulgaria without a medal,\u2019 and I\u2019m just so, so happy that I was able to get a performance like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She will be back in action for her semi-final in Thursday\u2019s evening session where she takes on Kukhta Vlagyszlava of Hungary.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Jude Gallagher was eliminated after a 3-2 defeat to Spain’s Ewart Andres Marin Hernandez in their 60kg quarter-final.<\/p>\n
Judges scored the bout, 29:28, 29:28, 28:29, 28:29, 30:27 in favour of the 22-year-old Spaniard, a former World Youth silver medallist and a silver medallist at August\u2019s Mediterranean Games.<\/p>\n
Paris Olympian Gallagher, who hails from Tyrone, had a good championship with notable wins over Maksym Bocarov of Slovakia and Lounes Hamraoui of France.<\/p>\n
\n Irish boxers in action on Wednesday\n <\/p>\n
70kg semi-final: Jon McConnell V Nabi Isgandarov, AZE, Ring B, Evening Session Bout 9 Approx 6:15pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roscommon sisters Lisa and Aoife O’Rourke both battled their way to finals at the European Elite Championships in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1812,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-633689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-boxing","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}