Latecomer Jennifer Lehane counting on 'trampoline effect' as Paris dream comes into view

Team Ireland's boxers at Paris 2024 won't be wanting for experience.

Kellie Harrington knows what it takes to come away from an Olympics with a gold medal in the back pocket and Aidan Walsh also returned home from Tokyo three years ago gratefully clutching a bronze.

The Belfast fighter's sister Michaela was also at the delayed 2020 Games as was Roscommon's Aoife O'Rourke.

That quartet's knowhow when it comes to navigating an Olympics both in and out of the ring will be invaluable, along with the tutelage of highly experienced lead coach Zaur Antia.

But the rest of the ten-strong contingent of Irish fighters heading to Paris have not been to an Olympics before, although Sligo's Dean Clancy has been to the youth version in fairness.

But the least experienced team member, at least where involvement in boxing itself is concerned, will be Meath bantamweight Jennifer Lehane, the 25-year-old only taking up boxing just over five years ago.

That late arrival to pugilism is mainly down to a long-time commitment to another discipline that her family had long been immersed in.

"I started taekwondo when I was four or five years old," the Ashbourne native explains to RTÉ Sport.

"So I grew up with that and I started competing internationally as a junior then for taekwondo when I was about 15 years old, going to the likes of European and World Championships.

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Jennifer Lehane was among six of the Team Ireland boxers to chat in-depth to RTÉ Sport as they convened at the Sport Ireland Campus

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