Luck of the Irish
By Joaquin Henson
PhilBoxing.com
Tue, 21 Apr 2020
Irish Magno.
With Irish Magno’s track record, it’s difficult to imagine that she’s in the history books as the first Filipina boxer ever to qualify for the Olympics. Call it the luck of the Irish. The Iloilo-born Magno, 28, has never won a gold medal at the Southeast Asian Games, settling for a silver last December, another silver in 2015 and a bronze in 2013. At the AIBA World Championships, she never went beyond the opening preliminaries in 2014, 2016 and 2019.
Last year, Magno took an early exit at the Indian Open, Thailand Open and AIBA World Championships and didn’t even win a single fight. That’s how bleak the outlook was for Magno to nail a berth in the Tokyo Olympics. In the SEA Games last December, it seemed like she was on the way to the gold after blanking Singapore’s Leona Hui Xi Yee, 5-0 and downing Thailand’s Jutamas Jitpong, 4-1. But in the final, Magno dropped a 4-1 decision to Vietnamese nemesis Nguyen Thi Tam. The same Tam had beaten her, 5-0, in the Thailand Open last year. Believe it or not, Tam hasn’t qualified for the Olympics yet while Magno has already punched her ticket to Tokyo.
At the Asia/Oceania Olympic Qualifiers in Amman last month, Magno started like a house on fire, halting Hong Kong’s Winnie Au in the second round then faced six-time world champion Mary Kom of India in the quarterfinals. Kom, 37, is a legend in women’s boxing. Aside from her six world titles, she has won five Asian championships and the gold medal at the 2014 Asian Games and 2018 Commonwealth Games. Her reign as world champion began in 2002 and continued until 2018. Magno couldn’t crack Kom and lost, 5-0.
But with Lady Luck on her side, Magno was given one last chance to book an Olympic ticket in a box-off against Tajikistan’s 19-year-old Sumaiya Qosimova. This time, Magno wouldn’t be denied a victory as she blanked the flustered teenager, 5-0 on a shutout with the five judges scoring it 30-24 thrice and 30-25 twice.
So far, nine fighters have qualified for the flyweight division in women’s boxing in Tokyo. Three are from Africa----Algeria’s Roumaysa Boualam, Morocco’s Rabab Cheddar and Kenya’s Christine Ougare and six from Asia----Kom, Magno, China’s Chang Yuan, Japan’s Tsukimi Namiki, Chinese-Taipei’s Huang Hsiao-wen and Uzbekistan’s Tursunoy Rakhimova. There are 26 slots in the 51-kilogram class with the balance of 17 to be filled by four from the Americas, six from Europe, six from the World Qualifiers in Paris (still unscheduled) and one wildcard tripartite invitee.
Of the qualified fighters, Magno has fought only two, Kom and Chang whom she lost to on a 4-1 verdict in the second preliminaries at the AIBA World Championships in New Delhi in 2018. Chang beat Kom, 5-0 in the semifinals and Namiki, 3-2 in the final to bag the gold at the Asia/Oceania Olympic Qualifiers in Amman. Magno, whose hobby is basketball, made it to Tokyo ahead of her teammate Nesthy Petecio, the reigning AIBA world featherweight champion who will try to catch the last bus to the Olympics at the World Qualifiers. It’ll be a tough grind for Magno in Tokyo but with the luck of the Irish, she might just become the first Filipina boxer to land a podium finish in Olympic history.
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