Irish boxers won two medals at the World Junior (Under-19) Championships in Buenos Aires last weekend.
The winners were Harry Cunningham from the Saints club in Belfast who won the silver medal in the 48 kilo (light flyweight) division and Darren Campbell, from the Glin club in Dublin, who won bronze in the 51 kilo (flyweight) semi-final.
The performance of the Irish boxers has given a boost to Irish chances of having a strong representation in the next Olympic Games in Sydney in the year 2000 and Irish boxing administrators are now confident of putting a strong side into the qualifying tournaments which have now become necessary in order to gain admittance to the Games where entries are limited to 32 in each weight category.
Cunningham's success is something of a family double since his brother, Liam, won a bronze medal in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur a couple of months ago.
In the flyweight division Campbell opened up with a win over the Finland representative Juho Tolpola and was given the verdict on a score of 9-7. He met the Korean, Jae Kim in the next round and stopped him in the second round when the referee intervened but his courageous effort ended against the Russian Georgi Balakshin in the quarter-final and there was no complaint about the score of 14-5.
