Tokyo 2020 - Quality and character? Team GB’s defining weekend of boxing with Lauren Price and Galal Yafai

To round off a stellar fortnight for British boxing in Tokyo the two fighters still standing need to do the hardest bit: add a gold medal this weekend to the best campaign since the 1920 Amsterdam Games.

By 7am in London on day 13, the sweet science had already treated British TV viewers to a riveting performance that expressed the spirit of the country’s amateur fighters, who are guaranteed six medals. The flyweight semi-final win of Galal Yafai also said plenty about him as an individual. His tenacity in beating Kazakhstan's Saken Bibossinov raised hopes that a British gold will drop in Yafai’s final against Carlo Paalam from the Philippines on Saturday. Lauren Price meanwhile is fancied to win her women’s middleweight semi-final on Friday ahead of Sunday’s finale.

Two golds would be a further vindication for GB Boxing, established in 2008 to run a World Class Performance Programme covering the best male and female fighters in England, Scotland and Wales. Its base at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield receives a grant of £14.6 million from the National Lottery and Exchequer via UK Sport.

Presumption, in a boxing ring, is a dangerous flaw. Yafai, from a family of fine pugilists, will need to summon again the industry and aggression he deployed against the fast hands of Bibossinov in a high-class bout. Sometimes in boxing you can see the greater will of one fighter swing a tight contest. Yafai, who scored a scored count in round one, exuded the classic boxer’s refusal to lose.

There had already been abundant highs - and the odd low - to keep the drama flowing. In the men’s welterweight class, Pat McCormack was restricted to silver by the skill of Cuba's Roniel Iglesias (the wall of Cuban talent is still there for just about every other country to bounce off). Much the same story shaped the men’s light heavyweight final, where Ben Whittaker, who wants to be Mayor of Wolverhampton, lost to Cuba’s Arlen Lopez. Whittaker, who wouldn’t be short of an elaborate ring walk in the pro game, was too respectful of Lopez and didn’t keep pressing with his super-fast jabs after making a busy start.

Frazer Clarke (super heavyweight) was undone partly by misfortune in his previous bout, when his eye was cut by Mourad Aliev’s use of the head (Aliev was disqualified and sat on the ring apron in protest for half an hour). In his semi against Uzbekistan’s Bakhodir Jalovov, Clarke still wore the damage above his eye and Jalovov was ready to capitalise, reopening and extending the wound until the ring doctor stopped the contest in the third round. Clarke, the team captain, was remarkably sanguine about the earlier foul play that undermined his chance of winning gold. He seemed more concerned with paying tribute to the team and cherishing his bronze medal. Also going home with bronze is Karrriss Artingstall, who lost her women’s featherweight semi-final to Irie Sena of Japan.

These boxers follow a gilded route. The symbolic breakthrough was made by Audley Harrison with his super heavyweight gold in Sydney in 2000. Amir Khan was a silver medallist four years later in Athens. Then, in Beijing in 2008, James DeGale won middleweight gold on the road to world titles. At London 2012, Luke Campbell (bantamweight), Anthony Joshua (super heavy) and Adams were all gold medallists as Britain finished top of the Olympic boxing table for the first time since 1908. In Rio, where Adams won again, Joe Joyce maintained Britain’s modern heavyweight tradition with a silver medal against Tony Yoka. Joyce is now a leading world title contender, in the tier behind Joshua and Tyson Fury.

Britain is no longer the hopeful outsider of Olympic boxing and numerous professional world champions since 2000 can trace their graduations to the sometimes chaotic lucky dip of boxing at the Games.

In 2019 the International Olympic Committee stripped the International Boxing Association (AIBA) of the right to Olympic boxing, replacing it with an ad-hoc committee. In the IOC report, AIBA’s president, Gafur Rakhimov, was alleged on US Treasury Department evidence to be “one of the leaders of Uzbek organised crime”. Rakhimov denies any wrongdoing. But there is no mistaking boxing’s desperation in Tokyo to regain its lustre and avoid expulsion. Other forms of combat could easily take its place at the top of the organised violence menu.

Meanwhile the British boom continues, with Team GB exemplifying the shift towards equality between men and women’s boxing. Nicola Adams, who won flyweight gold at London 2012 and Rio 2016, is missed, but Lauren Price is ready to take her torch. Her story is sensational. She played football for Cardiff City, where she won the Welsh Women’s Premier League, represented Wales, and was inspired by Adams in 2012 to commit fully to boxing.

A potentially momentous weekend for Britain’s boxers is evoking 1920, when gold medals were won by Ronald Rawson and Harry Mallin, a policeman who became the first British TV sports commentator, from Alexandra Palace in 1937. Six medals now - as in 1920 - is a nice array of metal, but they still need one to be gold, to show there is world-beating quality in this GB team as well as great character.

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