The Youth Olympic Games takes place in Dakar, Senegal, from October 31st to November 13th.
Boxing Ireland High Performance Director, Jon Mackey, outlines the process for nominating, and selecting, athletes for the Games.
For Olympic multi-games events, the NGB, in this case Boxing Ireland, nominates athlete(s) for selection to the Olympic Federation of Ireland. It is the OFI which selects all athletes who will represent Team Ireland in these events.
Jon says “Traditionally, every year, we would select teams for national squads through a selection process and a selection panel would sit down and oversee that and make sure that all the governance requirements are met and all the eligibility requirements are in place and then boxing Ireland would essentially make the decision around selection. It’s slightly different when it comes to any event that’s associated with the IOC or the International Olympic Committee and it’s overseen by our national Olympic Committee which is the Olympic Federation of Ireland in that we first have to go through what’s called a nomination process.”
Jon adds “So the nomination process essentially is Boxing Ireland nominating a named athlete to the Olympic Federation of Ireland and the Olympic Federation of Ireland would make the official selection to team Ireland. So in relation to the upcoming games, we are right now in the middle of that nomination uh process.”