With eye on Olympic medals, Bernard Dunne plans bespoke approach for Indian boxers as High Performance Director

As Indian boxing team’s high performance director Bernard Dunne joined the conversation over a social media application, the Irishman was quick to grab a bottle of water. Having followed his country’s sensational win over England in the rain-curtailed T20 World Cup Super 12 match in Melbourne over his phone on Wednesday afternoon, the 42-year-old needed something to quench his thirst following the high tension match. The former Irish boxing high performance director, who replaced Swedish Santiago Nieva, had also watched the much anticipated India Pakan T20 World Cup match on Sunday.
“I am glad that Ireland won. I was watching the match and it was great. Thank god for the rain that we won. I do watch cricket and I watched the full India Pakan match on Sunday alongside my boxers. It was a tough match for the Irish after the loss against Sri Lanka. The key for them was that they believed in themselves. And that’s what I want from my boxers: to believe in their abilities,” Dunne told The Indian Express.
The Irishman, who won the IBA super bantamweight world title in his professional days, had his first experience of watching Indian boxers in action at the 2012 London Olympics.
Dunne worked as an analyst with a TV channel during the London Olympics. With India sending a record eight boxers to London, only Mary Kom won a medal. Boxers like Vikas Krishan suffered a pre quarter-final loss against American Errol Spence, a 13-11 decision in favour of the Indian which was reviewed later and saw the American winning the bout. It resulted in a medal less Olympics for the men boxers followed Rio Olympics, where only three Indian men boxers qualified with none of the women boxers able to qualify.
“Post the Rio Olympics, I would have a working relationship with the Indian team for close to five years during my time with the Irish boxing team. I had good relations with Santiago and Raffaele Bergamasco and we trained together several times in Ireland as well in Germany with the current group of Indian boxers. Lack of Olympic medals should not reflect upon these boxers’ abilities. In our sport, the Olympics are the pinnacle in amateur boxing and we get the best boxers competing for the medal.
“Indian boxers have won medals in the Olympics. Potentially, they should have won more. My job over the next two years is to shape this team and to maximize their performance,” adds Dunne.
In London, three Irish boxers won medals with Katie Taylor picking gold in women’s lightweight division apart from John Nevin, winning the bantamweight silver and a bronze each for Michael Conlan (flyweight) and Paddy Barnes (light flyweight).
At the Rio Olympics, none of the Irish boxers could win a medal. Post Rio, Dunne started working with the Irish boxing team and the former professional boxer has seen Kellie Herrington becoming the Olympic champion in women’s lightweight division and Aidan Walsh winning the bronze in men’s welter-weight division at the 2021 Games.
High success rate with Ireland
As compared to nine Indian boxers in Tokyo, seven Irish boxers qualified for Tokyo with two of them winning a medal each including Herrington’s gold. “Kellie won the gold in Tokyo while Aidan won the bronze. The key for us was that we were focussed as a team and aligned on the same path with each one of the seven boxers. Whether it was sports science, strength and conditioning or technical coaching, each boxer understood what we were trying to achieve. We won two medals and five boxers did not win medals. That’s not a failure for those five boxers. I am extremely proud of all five. All of them understood and trusted me to help them maximize their potential. That’s what my job with Indian boxers will be like. To help each one of them maximize their potential,” says the former boxer.
While world number one Amit Panghal lost to Cuban Yuberjen Martinez in men’s flyweight pre-quarter-final, world championship bronze medall Manish Kaushik too faced an early exit apart from Ashish Kumar and Vikas Krishan suffering first round losses in Tokyo last year.
Lovlina Borgohain won India’s third medal in boxing in Olympics, a bronze, in women’s welter-weight division and it was followed Women’s high performance director Raffaele Bergamasco resigning within a month. Chief high performance director Santiago Nieva too joined the Australian team early this year and Dunne has his task cut out for the Indian boxers.
“The key for us will be to peak at the right time come the Paris Olympics. With 629 days remaining, each day is going to count. It’s not like you run mountains and chop down trees every single day to prepare for Paris. A lot of these days will be rest days and lots of days will be spent understanding what the best way to maximize performance is. As a leader, my task is to chalk out the right kind of individual programmes for each of my boxers and to focus the resources according to each individual and weight categories. And for the boxers, each one of them needs to have a voice about his training regime. It’s their career and they should be able to voice their opinions on the training too,” sayd Dunne, who also worked as a performance coach with a Dublin County football team.
While the Indian team will face its first challenge under Dunne in the form of next week’s Asian Championships in Jordan, the Irishman knows how tough the road to the Paris Olympics will be. Prior to Tokyo, India had won 13 medals in Asian Championships and nine Indian boxers qualified for Tokyo.
With countries like Brazil, Turkey and Ireland having an Olympic champion each in Tokyo, Dunne believes an Indian boxer too can win an Olympic gold. “There is vast talent in the country and there are different boxers boxing with different styles. If somebody is good at counter punches, my job is to fine tune his style more and same goes for the boxers, who box with a good ring IQ. The key for me is to build trust with each of the boxers so that I am able to raise points about their performance in a fair way,” concludes Dunne.