There are just 145 days until the start of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Of those 145 days, the most important for Irish boxers are the next 14 in Busto Arsizio, near Milan.
The Italian town hosts the "Boxing Road to Paris" competition where Olympic hopefuls will be set on having their name printed on a ticket to the biggest competition of them all.
Waterford's Kelyn Cassidy has spent the past four years working towards this point. In 2021, he ended a nine-year wait for a Déise boxer to win a National Senior Elite title in dramatic fashion and since then has improved with every contest he has entered, setting himself up take a place on the plane with Team Ireland in July.
The Story So Far
Since his shock knockout win over Tommy Hyde in the National Arena, he has gone on to retain his title twice more for a trio of light heavyweight successes and has spent the interim years travelling the world representing both Ireland and his club, Saviour's Crystals.
61 boxers are entered in Kelyn's weight class for this tournament and all of them know that they will need to secure at least a bronze medal if they want to pull on a singlet in Paris. To claim that bronze medal, Cassidy will need to reach the semi-final stage. The four boxers who emerge victorious from the final eigtht will have their ticket stamped to Paris.
However, this is a story that he has heard before. At last summer's European Games, the Ballybeg native came agonisingly close to securing qualification but fell short in his final bout with Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Oleksandr Khyzhniak. A disputed referee count back for a debatable knockdown saw Cassidy short on the scorecards at the final whistle with the Ukrainian advancing to Paris.
If Cassidy is to join his former opponent in the City of Love later this year he will likely have to beat some heavy artillery in either a semi or quarter-final in these next two weeks.
Preliminaries
His opening bout is against Greece's Michail Tsamalidis who boasts an uninspiring record of two wins and two losses, having started his amateur career in the summer of 2023. The 19-year-old has squeezed all his experience to date into a confined 6-month period, and in all likelihood should not pose too great a challenge to the Waterford man.
Providing he advances past the opener, he will be greeted by Guatemalan Wyatt Trujillo, who is one of only three boxers to get a bye in the opening round. With just seven bouts and 18 rounds of amateur boxing to his name, Trujillo should not bother Cassidy too much. It is a fight that he should be able to get through without exerting himself to any great extent.
A third preliminary bout would follow, with scope for upsets as the herd is thinned down. His potential opponents at that stage of the competition would be Noa Hadjit (Belgium), Sulaiman Aslami (Afghanistan), Keven Beausejour (Canada) & Rafayel Hovhannisyan (Armenia).
19-year-old, Hadjit, is 13-7-0 and has boxed at the Youth World Championships, reaching the semi-final stage.
Aslami is 6-3-0 and has not boxed at any tournament of note, without any significant wins to his name.
Beausejour has only had two bouts in his career, losing one and winning one (1-1-0).
Hovhannisyan, similar to Hadjit, could pose a problem. At 22 years of age, the Armenian is 14-8-0 with three knockouts, having boxed at the European U23 Championships, albeit he was stopped at the quarter-final stage.
Quarter-Finals
If he can advance past the preliminary bouts, the quarter-finals are where we are likely to see the cream start to rise to the top.
His potential opponents include:
Carlos Gongora, Ecuador, 22-2-0 (17 KOs) Two-time Pan American bronze medalist, as well as Gold and silver medalist at the South American games.
Nurbek Oralbay, Kazakhstan, 51-14-0 (5 KOs). Gold medalist at both the World Amateur Championships and Youth World Championships, with a bronze medal at the Asian Championships.
Shabbos Negmatulloev, Tajikistan, 33-22-0 (3 KOs). Cassidy has previously beaten him by split decision at the 2021 AIBA World Championships.
Aliaksei Alfiorau, Belarus, 44-12-0 (8 KOs). Has previously beaten Cassidy at the 2021 AIBA World Championships. Former World Championship silver medallist as well as bronze and silver medals at the Youth World Championships and European Youth Championships respectively.
Kevin Schumann, Germany, 32-15-0 (2KOs). Cassidy has previously beaten Schumann at the 2023 Usti nad Labem Grand Prix. Silver medallist at the 2021 European U22 Championships.
Jonathan Tetteh, Ghana, 1-1-0.
Prewa Padabadi, Togo, 1-1-0.
Cedrick Duliepre, Haiti, 2-1-0.
Of those eight, the most likely to reach the quarter-finals are Oralbay, Negmatulloev or Alfiorau, Gongora and Schumann, with their records speaking for themselves.
Cassidy has already beaten two of those (Schumann and Negmatulloev), giving the Irish man the upper hand if only in the psychological battle, while he was beaten by Alfiorau last year.
That potential quarter-final appearance would come on March 11th and there is a lot of boxing to get through between now and then.
The Business End
Breaking down the other side of the draw at his venture would be a fool's errand and we will have to wait for the herd to be thinned out before making any predictions on that end, but there is one competitor worth pointing out.
Robby (Rahim) Gonzales is a former world light heavyweight world champion, winning gold at the games in Belgrade in 2021. He boasts a record of 61-16-0 and has already beaten Cassidy as recently as last year, but notably, he has lost his two most recent bouts since that win over Cassidy.
After four years of ups and downs for the Waterford man, this tournament in Italy is almost the last hurrah. There will be another bite of the cherry in Thailand in May, but Cassidy will want to wrap it up at the earliest opportunity following his disappointment last summer.
He may well be Ireland's most improved boxer since the Tokyo games, he now just needs to go out and show that.
