Boxers return from Spain’s Boxam tournament with seven medals, including four gold

MEMBERS of the GB Boxing academy squad will return from this year’s Boxam tournament in La Nucia, Spain, with seven medals including four golds for Hamza Uddin, Lucy-Kings Wheatley, Sacha Hickey and Patrick Hewitt.

Ellis Trowbridge picked up the team’s only silver medal, whilst flyweight Kelsey Oakley and light-welterweight Patris Mughalzai earned bronze.

There were also three other medals earned by GB Boxers representing the England Boxing squad in the Youth competition.

All three were gold and were awarded to Lauren Mackie, Amber Moss-Birch and Owen Ketley, with the latter being named Youth male boxer of the tournament.

Finals day in Alicante got off to a flying start when, in her third bout of the competition, reigning National Amateur champion Lucy Kings-Wheatley beat the host nation’s Nayara Rodriguez via split decision (4:1) to hand her a first senior gold.

The lightweight had beaten both Julia Villegas and Maria Perez on her way to reaching the final.

Sacha Hickey wasted no time in following in her teammates footsteps and securing gold, this time in the light-welterweight contest as she put in an impressive display to earn a unanimous points victory over Jekaterina Sorokins of Latvia.

It was Hickey’s second bout in Spain, having sealed another unanimous victory over Holland’s Keona Sam-Sin in the semi-finals.

The third boxer to go gold on finals day was Hamza Uddin. The flyweight added to his impressive year so far, which in April saw him crowned National Amateur champion, as he beat Spain’s Eric Gomez unanimously.

His only other victory of the competition came earlier in the week against Wales’ Scott Richards via a narrow 3:2 split.

Concluding the day and making it two golds from two tournaments as a GB Boxer was Patrick Hewitt.

The welterweight eased his way to being crowned champion with a unanimous win over Ganda Coulibaly of Spain.

Hewitt’s other gold since becoming a member of the GB Boxing academy squad came at last year’s Golden Gong.

Competing for just the second time in eleven months following an injury lay-off, Ellis Trowbridge took on 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Owain Harris of Wales in the featherweight final.

It was a closely fought contest between the pair but it was unfortunately Harris who did enough to get the nod from the judges via a 4:1 split, forcing Trowbridge to settle for silver.