THE LIST of British male medalists at the World Amateur Championships shows 14 names. Only one has struck gold. That came in Chicago in November 2007. Frankie Gavin was one of 55 entries at 60kgs.
There weren’t any Cubans on the list, but the fighter rated the pound-for-pound best in the world was there, Alexey Tishchenko.
To win gold, the Russian would have to get past a ballet dancer from Birmingham.
Tom Chaney taught Gavin to box at Hall Green Amateur Boxing Club and remembered a disgruntled coach telling him, “that’s not boxing, it’s ballet dancing” after his boxer struggled to lay a glove on Gavin.
Chaney replied: “You wait and see how far ballet dancing takes him.”
Chaney knew what he was doing. He was putting together a boxer designed to win bouts decided by computer scoring.
“Some boxers stood there throwing four punches and landing one,” he says, “and you didn’t know how the judges would score that.
“We developed a style to win amateur tournaments. It was in and out and use the southpaw advantages and don’t leave your feet there.
“Frankie was a straggly, baby-faced kid. They would look at him and think they could destroy him. But they couldn’t catch him.”
His wits, skills and sense of distance and timing were sharpened by hundreds of rounds sparring, and by the time the World Championships came to Chicago, Gavin had won golds at the Junior Olympics (2002) and Commonwealth Games (2006).
Terry Edwards, Great Britain head coach at the time, remembers a loss as a turning point.
GB faced Cuba in Liverpool in April 2005 and Gavin met Mario Kindelan, crowned Olympic champion in Athens eight months earlier with a points win over Amir Khan.
“Frankie was just a baby when he boxed Kindelan,” says Edwards, “but he learned so much from that fight.”
Gavin was beaten 18-7 and though Kindelan wouldn’t be in Chicago, Edwards says: “It was probably the toughest World Championship I had been to, because it was an Olympic qualifier as well.”
To qualify for the Beijing games, Gavin had to win a medal and only David Haye (silver), Carl Froch (bronze) and Neil Perkins (bronze) had won medals for Britain at World Championships since the event started in 1974.
Preparations didn’t go smoothly.
Gavin picked up injuries that meant he could only spar “once or twice” at the team’s Philadelphia base before heading to Chicago.
“Frankie didn’t have a great draw either,” says Edwards. “They were all tough kids.”
Bouts at the University of Illinois Pavilion would be over four two-minute rounds, but Gavin didn’t need them all to beat Omar Ward from Barbados in his first fight.
After 54 seconds of the third round, he had piled up 20 unanswered points on the ringside judges’ computers and the contest was stopped on the ‘outclassed’ rule.
Gavin’s second-round clash with Kazakh Merey Akshalov was closer.
Akshalov was ahead 6-5 at the midway point, but Gavin responded to outscore him 8-1 in the third before going on to run out a 20-9 points winner.
“He gave me a good fight,” Frankie says. “He didn’t stop coming, had long arms and changed what he did.
“I went there thinking I could win a medal, but the more I saw of the other fighters, the more I believed I could beat them. I watched them and saw their weaknesses.
“But I wasn’t really concentrating on the fights. I was only thinking about who I was boxing after I had made the weight.
“I was killing myself to make the weight. I would get up on the morning of my fight, have a banana for breakfast and then go straight to the gym to sweat off some weight.”
In the last 16, Gavin faced Ramal Amanov, a southpaw from Azerbaijan who had won silver at the world championships two years earlier.
They spent the opening minute poking and feinting, trying to draw mistakes. When the mistake came, it came from Amanov. With 40 seconds left in the round, he launched a looping swipe that missed and Gavin found his exposed chin with a lightning left-hand counter that put the Kazakh on the seat of his trunks.
Up quickly, Amanov was 4-2 down at the end of the round, and by the halfway stage, Gavin was six points up.
He pulled away to win 21-10 to set up a match with Turkish teenager Onur Sipal that would decide a medal and a place at the 2008 Olympic Games.
Sipal figured the way to beat Gavin was to rush him – and he was wrong.
Gavin was too slick and pecked away with clean singles to win 16-7.
He then turned his attention to a semi-final he seemed to have no chance of winning.
Tishchenko, a 21-year-old from Russia, had been unbeaten for four years and had won gold at both the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the World Championships the following year at featherweight.
Tishchenko then moved up to lightweight and won the European Championship.
He also knew all about Gavin. Throughout the Worlds, Tishchenko had been spotted at ringside jotting notes about his fellow lightweight contenders.
Early in the second, Gavin trailed 4-1 but then changed the course of the bout.
Gavin won the next 11 points without reply as he repeatedly beat Tishchenko to the punch with long lefts.
Going into the last, Gavin led 15-8 and says he “legged it” until the final bell. He still outscored Tishchenko in the last two minutes to win 19-10.
American commentators described as “an upset of epic proportions”, but Gavin shrugs: “When I was in there with him it didn’t feel as though I was boxing someone who had achieved so much.”
That was Gavin’s 99th win in 120 amateur bouts and the following day he boxed for World Championships gold.
He knew what to expect, having twice before boxed Domenico Valentino, losing on what Edwards remembered as a “ridiculous” outclassed points ruling in Italy before turning the tables in Sunderland.
“He was 17-14 ahead and then he blew up,” remembers Gavin of their second clash.
“I didn’t stop going at him in the last round, won it 8-0, and the fight. I had improved so much between then and the World Championships final.”
The final would be Gavin’s fourth bout in as many days and the venue was filled, mostly with Italian-Americans.
They cheered Valentino to the ring but cheered even louder when they spotted Gavin, now a coach at Acocks Green ABC after winning British and Commonwealth honours in his 26-4 pro career.
“We went to a souvenir shop on the afternoon of the final and bought a flag of the local American football team, the Chicago Bears,” remembers Edwards.
“We put it around Frankie’s shoulders and held it up when we got to the ring. The crowd went crazy. They made it known who they were supporting. There was a tremendous atmosphere and Frankie had the crowd right behind him.”
The crowd saw Valentino, a bronze medallist at both the 2004 Olympics and the previous World Championships, look to crowd Gavin with wave after wave of two-fisted attacks.
Gavin read him, shifting his feet in and out of punching range and picking the exact split-second to throw his pinpoint counters.
He was 3-1 ahead after the opening round and Valentino had a rethink.
The Italian tried to outbox Gavin and found he couldn’t. After three rounds, Gavin was 13-7 ahead – and two minutes away from gold.
He knew Valentino would throw himself at him and Gavin kept his wits about him to win the last round as well and take the decision, 18-10.
“It wasn’t a classic final,” says Edwards. “Frankie boxed better in the semi-finals and maybe the final was an anticlimax for him after beating Tishchenko. But boxing is all about styles and getting the win.
“It was a feat to hold the weight throughout the tournament and they were all world-class fighters he boxed.”
Gavin says: “Joe Calzaghe beat Mikkel Kessler the same weekend, so I didn’t get that much publicity – that was out of order!”
