Can 'Chunky' DeGale save British boxing pride with gold on Sunday?

Friday, August 22: British boxers have met with contrasting fortunes in Beijing. While previous Olympic Games launched the professional careers of Audley Harrison and Amir Khan, this time round Team GB will bring home only two bronzes, a guaranteed silver for James DeGale (gold if he can beat Cuba's Emilio Correa Bayeaux in the final on Sunday), and a generous dose of controversy.

First, the good news: ‘Chunky’ DeGale, often an underachiever in the past, produced a performance of real tactical maturity today to beat Darren Sutherland, an Irish fighter who’d won four of their five previous contests. By the end, the 22-year-old from Harlesden was able to showboat his way to victory in the semi-final fight at the Beijing Workers Gymnasium. DeGale graced the ensuing press conference with an impromptu rap – “I told you the skills pay the bills.”

Britain’s two bronzes went to David Price and Tony Jeffries. In the super-heavyweight division, reigning world champion Roberto Cammarelle got through Price’s defences with a succession of punishing left-hand punches to the Liverpudlian’s head. Dazed and 9-0 down on points, Price was stopped in the second round.

Jeffries, who once cooked burgers outside the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, was also outclassed. He lost 10-3 to Irishman Kenny Egan in their light-heavyweight semi-final.

As for the controversy, this all started even before the games began when Frankie Gavin, a highly-fancied World Champion, flew home unable to guarantee he’d make the weight for his division.

Then, recently, Billy-Joe Saunders was suspended by the Amateur Boxing Association for ‘inappropriate behaviour’. Likeable, exuberant and the first Romany gypsy to represent Britain in the Olympics, the story of how 18-year-old Welterweight Saunders had made it from a traveller’s camp in Hertfordshire to Beijing was a different one - his great-grandfather had been a feted bare-knuckle fighter.

But Saunders went out to an experienced Cuban in the second round, remarking “The scoring here is so bad for an Olympic Games. It's unbelievable.” Then came the revelation that there was a video on YouTube showing him making lewd gestures towards a Frenchwoman at a pre-Games training camp.

Very few of the people who’ve commented on Saunders’ antics appear to have actually seen the video, which a friend of his insists was just ‘boyish banter’. But the misdemeanour may provide more ammunition for the GB head coach Terry Edwards’s legion of critics. Hated by the ABA hierarchy but loved by his boxers, Edwards will attempt to ignore the calls for his head as he prepares DeGale for his shot at gold against Correa Bayeaux.

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 22, 2008