Irish boxing suffered a major blow yesterday when Billy Walsh announced his resignation as the head coach of the High Performance Unit.
The Wexford native was an Olympian himself in Seoul in 1988 and he spoke to Off the Ball in 2013 about how that experience shaped the rest of his career.
Walsh along the Gary Keegan helped create the IABA High Performance unit with the help of the Irish Sports Council in 2003. Both men worked in tandem with Walsh acting as head coach and Keegan working as the High Performance Director until after the Beijing Olympics. Keegan took up a new position with the Irish Institute of Sport and Walsh worked in both positions until yesterday's decision.
The High Performance Unit helped Ireland become one of the premier boxing nations in the amateur game. Andy Lee was one of the first successes of the program. The now World Champion qualified for the Olympic Games in 2004 in Athens. The Limerick native lost in the last 16 of the Middleweight division. Lee's qualification was the be the lowest representation of Irish boxers in the Olympic Games in the High Performance era.
Listen to Walsh's interview with Off The Ball last night where he explained why he felt he had no choice but to resign:
Since then Ireland's star has been on the rise in amateur boxing, with Walsh integral and ringside for those achievements.
The 2008 Games showed plenty of promise. While no gold medals were forthcoming, Paddy Barnes, Kenneth Egan (silver), Darren Sutherland all took home medals as Ireland finished 12th in the boxing medals table.
It would prove to be a precursor for an extraordinary 2012 as Katie Taylor battled her way to Ireland's only gold medal in any discipline in London in a fight watched with anticipation across the country, with the silver medal for John Joe Nevin and bronzes for Belfast pair Michael Conlan and Barnes making sure that boxing provided all but one of the five medals won by Irish men and women that year.
And the success has continued at world and European championship level. This year's European Championships in Bulgaria saw Ireland produce two gold medalists in Conlan and Joe Ward, while Conlan also picked up his first world championship gold medal in Doha this month as Ireland finished fourth on the global medal table thanks to the added efforts of fellow medallists Ward and Michael O'Reilly.
Walsh was again a key figure in that success, but all the while the issue with the Irish Amateur Boxing Association was bubbling under the surface - and eventually led to the Wexford man's resignation as High Performance Director as he moves on to take a role with USA boxing.
As Irish boxing digested the sad news yesterday, Walsh detailed the non-financial reasons to Off The Ball which have led to his decision and the hope is that with the Rio Olympics around the corner, the loss of Walsh does not knock the momentum built in Irish amateur boxing during his tenure of course.
And perhaps, it is apt to finish with what Andy Lee told Off The Ball about what the "incredible asset" Walsh meant to Irish boxing when rumours of a departure first surfaced. He warned that it "won't be long after they're gone that these gold medals dry up" if Walsh were to leave.
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