Sky is the limit for overwhelmed European champion Gabriel Dossen

He has become just the fifteenth Irish boxer to win gold at the European Championships, but 22-year-old Gabriel Dossen says he is struggling to grasp the enormity of his achievement.

Dossen put on a classy display to get the better of England's Lewis Richardson in their middleweight final, claiming a unanimous decision on the judges' scorecards.

With bantamweight Dylan Eagleson taking silver earlier in the day and the dust barely settled on Amy Broadhurst and Lisa O'Rourke’s recent gold medal wins at the World Championships, it marks an incredible fortnight for Irish amateur boxing.

What makes Dossen’s achievement all the more remarkable is that he was competing in his first senior tournament, and the fighter from the Olympic Boxing Club in Galway suffered setbacks through a cut in funding and a bout of Covid earlier this year.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Dossen said it is hard to digest the victory so soon after the bout.

"I don’t think it has really kicked in yet that I’m European champion," he said. "It just feels like another win.

"My phone has blown up. It all feels so surreal."

The southpaw says the hard work really started in January when, after discussions with his coach Mike Mongan and his mother, he decided to put college and his second semester on hold to fully concentrate on the sport.

The Ivory Coast-born Dossen, whose father is originally from Liberia and his mother from Ethiopia, has been on the amateur radar for quite some time, winning back-to-back World and European Youth bronze medals in 2016 and 2017.

He won his first national Elite title in 2019 but later missed out on the Tokyo Olympic qualifiers with a knee injury.

The fighter decided to leave no stone unturned to realise his goal.

"Gabriel has always