McConnell may have taken the only gold but it was a successful Games for the boxing team as a whole with half of the 12-strong squad taking home a medal.<\/p>\n
Michaela Walsh and Kaci Rock also leave Glasgow with a silver while Willie John McCartan, Garyn McAllister and Jude Gallagher, champion four years ago, all claimed bronze.<\/p>\n
There was much made of the age profiles of the squad heading over to Glasgow, with eight aged 25 or under and nine competing at their first Games.<\/p>\n
While Louis Rooney, Janssen Hill, Eoghan Quinn and JP Hale all fell at the first hurdle, they were the only four to not win at least one bout.<\/p>\n
Nicole Clyde and Caitlin Fryers made it to the quarter-final stage while McCartan, McAllister and Gallagher exited at the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Some did receive the luck of the draw, with Walsh, Rock, Walsh, Hill, McAllister and McCartan going straight through to quarter-finals where they were one win away from a medal, but they still had to seize the initiative and push on.<\/p>\n
For Walsh, it was a fourth successive medal at the Games, her third silver to add to the two from 2014 and 2018 and the gold from 2022.<\/p>\n
She joins bowler Neil Booth, shooter Martin Millar plus Mike Bull and Lady Mary Peters from athletics on four medals at the Games. <\/p>\n
Only shooter David Calvert has won more with eight.<\/p>\n
She was “speechless” to hear her name mentioned among those greats, but her achievements demonstrate her longevity and she’s not finished yet.<\/p>\n
“I’m proud of my performances throughout the whole tournament. I have Europeans now in six weeks and I’m using this as a springboard to that and I’m ready to go again,” she said.<\/p>\n
“[Four medals] It’s obviously an amazing achievement. I’m lucky, I love boxing and I’m doing what I love. It’s a lifetime of work and it’s amazing for the medals to show that.”<\/p>\n
While Walsh is used to such an occasion, it was easy for younger members of the team to be overawed at a first multi-sport competition, but Rock showed maturity beyond her years, particularly in fighting back to win the semi-final after losing the first round.<\/p>\n
For Rock, like McConnell, it’s a first major medal at her first Games and she believes it is just the start for her and many of her team-mates.<\/p>\n
“I think so many people doubted our team because we’re a younger, fresher and inexperienced team but we have six medals coming home.<\/p>\n
“We’ve proven we’re only getting started and there’s so much more to come.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McConnell may have taken the only gold but it was a successful Games for the boxing team as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-723292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}