The Athy fighter will finally get to live out his Olympic dream and you can see what that means to him.
David Oliver Joyce became the sixth Irish boxer to qualify for this summer’s Olympic Games with a superb triumph in a box-off against Turkey’s Volkan Gokcek at the European Championships.
Joyce, who failed in his efforts to fight in the 2008 and 2012 Games, was up against it, facing the younger fighter in front of his home crowd, but came out the aggressor and won an action-packed first round on two of the three judges’ cards.
But the Turk battled back in round two, keeping out of range of Joyce’s combinations and picking off some clean shots of his own to earn a clean sweep from the judges and take control of the fight.
Both boxers were showing the scars of earlier contests and Joyce ended the fight with a cut over his right eye reopened, but he was again the busier of the two in the final stanza and was rewarded on all three cards, thus taking the fight via a split decision.
VIDEO: David Oliver Joyce was overcome with emotion after finally sealing a place at an Olympic Games.https://t.co/cWDyA90i9z
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) April 17, 2016
Joyce joins Michael Conlan, Paddy Barnes, Joe Ward, Steven Donnelly and Brendan Irvine on Ireland’s Olympic boxing team, while the likes of Michael O’Reilly, Darren O’Neill and Katie Taylor still have the chance to qualify for Rio at next month’s world championships in Kazakhstan.
