Magnificent 7 - Joy for Saunders but heartbreak for Smith by Kevin Taylor Mar 3rd 2008

Pescara - Day Six, Saturday 1st March 2008 (Olympic qualifying box-offs) The Olympic qualifying box-offs reached their conclusion on Saturday with another Team GB boxer qualifying for the Olympics in Beijing. The day started with potentially the joy of two more qualifications or the heartbreak of a long week where GB boxers were the stars of the show. 57kg - Stephen 'Swifty' Smith lost to Wilhelm Gratschow (GER) 13:18 The day started with a press conference set-up for the President of AIBA CK Wu to thank the town of Roseto Degli Abruzzi and the President of the Italian Boxing Federation. What's this got to do with Stephen Smith (Rotunda ABC, Liverpool) boxing for an Olympic place? Rather a lot as it was only by accident that at the end of this conference that all boxers found out that the schedule had been changed (12:30pm). Initially the Oympic qualification bouts were due to start at 18:30, now the running order had been changed. Swifty and Billy Joe Saunders were to box in one long afternnon session in weight order, meaning Stephen Smith would be boxing at 15:30 instead of 19:00, hardly ideal preparation. Matters deteriorated even further when it transpired that one of the 54kg bantamweight bouts could not take place as the competitors were not at the venue. Pressure was thus put on Stephen Smith and his opponent to enter the ring 20 minutes ahead of schedule with the English boxer only getting 10 minutes warning. Swifty made a quick start but his early lead was eclipsed by the end of the first round. Smith ends the round one point down. In the second round the German landed clear scoring shots, Swifty's less obvious shots were not scoring. Smith is six points down going into the third round. Scouser Smith stepped on the gas in the third round forcing Gratschow to hold. Smith's intense pressure, in fact, forced two holding penalties on the German. Swifty closed the round only two points down. Gratschow knew what he had to do in the last, punched when he needed to, and was just out of range or too close for Smith's work rate to count. Much passion and crowd participation meant people saw this result differently. GB's boxers and the majority of the support team, who who are normally pretty fair, thought Swifty a clear winner. However, GB judges/referees and media staff thought the German the rightful victor. R1 3:4, R2 3:9, R3 10:12, R4 13:18 If selected, Stephen must now reach the final in Athens (6-13th April) to qualify for Beijing. A task he is more than capable of achieving. Smith had a good tournament, but things did his not go his way in the decisive final two bouts. Remember Swifty boxed 5 times in 6 days. Swifty: "Why me. I thought I won that." Terry Edwards: "So much messing around, the change of bout order, and no officials telling anyone what is happening." 69kg Billy Joe Saunders bt Pavol Hlavacka (SVK) 20:10 A visibly more relaxed BJ entered the ring for this the most important bout of his fledgling senior international career. At no stage was BJ's Slovak opponent in the contest. After an unusual fast start by BJ he allowed the tall southpaw, Hlavacka to come back at him on the scoreboard, but BJ had landed a couple of decent body shots which you could see had taken steam from Hlavacka's punches and legs. After leading by one point at the end of the first southpaw BJ raised his tempo and was able to stay in front of the Slovak on skill and speed without wasting too much of his own energy. So much so that he switched to orthodox for the last quarter of the second round. Saunders knew exactly what he had to do to win, he turned on the style at will, without taxing himself, to easily finish the round seven points up. Round four was a victory lap for BJ, he demonstrated a couple of his many tricks to finish a 20:10 winner and a 2008 Beijing Olympian (Team GB's 7th so far!). R1 4:3 , R2 10:7 , R3 16:9, R4 20:10 Billy Joe Saunders: "I've done it. BEIJING!." "More relaxed, somehow the pressure was off me after yesterday when I lost my 50 bout winning streak. I'll go back and learn from yesterday's loss, I'll be a much better fighter when I get to Beijing. This is the fittest I've ever been. I wan't to thank my club coaches Danny Hoy and Sam Leo, Danny has been with me all my career, and particularly to thank Terry Edwards. He made me work really hard the last 15 months. Believe me, I wouldn't be here without UK Sport Lottery funding." Terry Edwards: "I'm now going to name all my boxers B Saunders. But that could be a problem when the two D Price's get through in Athens (Billy Joe Saunders joins Brad Saunders in Beijing, our heavyweight and superheavyweight are named Danny and David Price respectively)." "Everyone has taken special note of Billy Joe this week and they are right to. There's plenty to come from Billy." Matt Archibald GB Programme Manager: "Terry Edwards has put together a tough and challenging programme for the boxers. Before Chicago serious doubt was expressed. However, Terry has made his programme work by recruiting a support team that he believed, and now has demonstrated, could match the talent of his boxers. The success at Chicago and this tournament, not just in getting seven qualifiers, but the number of bouts taken part in, and wins achieved, shows how the coaches, support staff and boxers are effectively coalesced around Terry's vision. At the outset our target was 4 qualifiers, this was revised to 6, we will now have to pay UK Sport another visit! The team is confident we can qualify more in Athens."

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