Fighting mum Charley Davison nears Olympic dream on bittersweet day for boxing

Caroline Dubois had also impressed at the European Olympic boxing qualifiers in London before the tournament was suspended until May due to the escalating coronavirus outbreak

It was a bittersweet day for boxing on Monday in London when the IOC’s Boxing Task Force decided to cancel the European qualification tournament after three days at the Copper Box.

It was announced on Monday morning that the boxing would take place behind closed doors and after the first session the dreaded decision was taken to call it off. Last Friday there had been serious discussions about postponing the event; the Task Force’s decision was always a possibility.

“The decision has been made in conjunction with the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the Boxing Road to Tokyo Qualifying event amid the increasing global travel restrictions and quarantine measures which are impacting on the travel plans of athletes, teams and officials and affecting their ability to return home,” said a statement from the organisers.

The news further complicates the boxing qualification process for the Olympics with the Americas qualifier, due to start next week in Argentina, scrapped last week. The Olympic clock is ticking.

The awful news came just hours after the boxing fairy tale got serious for Charley Davison when she won her first contest.

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Davison is the mum of three, the former youth champion who took seven years out to have three children and help her partner run a restaurant. Well, now she is back.

At the Copper Box on Monday, with her family and friends locked out, Davison was quite brilliant against Ireland’s Cathy McNaul. She won all three rounds and forced the referee to give McNaul two standing counts in the third round.

Davison improved with each second as she relaxed, moved her feet and picked off McNaul with short counters and long shots. It was just one of those fights where everything that a boxer tries seems to work. The final scores reflected the dominance and it really was a flawless display against a seasoned boxer. McNaul won a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2018 at a time when Davison was knee-deep in nappies from her third child.

Last December Davison was invited to attend a GB Boxing Assessment session in Sheffield; at the time she had ended her domestic exile and returned to the ring to win the 54 kilo English title. However, that title is still only remotely connected to where she is right now.

Caroline Dubois is attempting to make it to Tokyo (Getty)

She was told or asked – it depends on who is telling the story – to drop to 51 kilo and over Christmas she dropped the weight. In early February she was selected, on Monday afternoon she started: the fighting mum is on her way.

Davison still needs one more win to secure a place on the Tokyo plane. She fights her quarter-final and the most important fight of her life on Thursday when she meets Poland’s number three seed, Sandra Drabik.

“The first one is always hard, I was getting rid of the ring rust,” she said. “I’m ready now – I’m loving this and taking it one fight at a time.” Back in Lowestoft over 30 people, including her kids, packed her living room to watch it on a big screen. The mood will have darkened shortly after when Davison called with the bad news.

There certainly ore extraordinary things happening in the sporting business right now, cruel and savage and possibly inevitable. There will be tears tonight, the big and the small, the brave and the fearless will know that their Olympic dream just edged further away. It is their life.

The boxing was due to continue tomorrow afternoon when Caroline Dubois, still only 19, was scheduled to fight Finland’s Mira Potkonen for a place in the quarter final. Dubois was just two wins from Tokyo and Potkonen, who beat Katie Taylor at the Rio Olympics, was the number one seed here at lightweight.

The women’s lightweight division, where there were six Tokyo spots available, features one current world professional champion, a former world professional champion, Potkonen and Kellie Harrington, Ireland’s amateur world champion. The odds were, to be brutally honest, stacked heavily against Dubois. However, she won on Saturday and then one of the real dangers, Delfine Persoon, crashed out. Persoon lost her world title in a ten-round brawl to Taylor last summer in New York at Madison Square Garden and her early exit here was a real shock.

There is an argument, one that I would support, making the proposed Dubois and Potkonen meeting the most intriguing women’s fight to ever take place in Britain: world number one, the European champion against the teenager, who is now unbeaten in 41 contests and has won every conceivable youth title. What if Dubois has won? They sparred together – hard sparring, by the way – in January at a training camp in Colorado Springs. There are always two sides to every sparring story, but Dubois certainly “held her own”. Incidentally, it was at that camp that Davison impressed the British boxing selectors.

It is a terrible end for all the boxers and the uncertainty will now continue until something drastic happens or somebody is bold enough to make a hard decision. It is never easy to qualify for the Olympics, thousands fail each time, but Tokyo this summer is starting to look like the most difficult destination ever.