75 boxers from 17 counties will compete for coveted Elite titles when the 2026 National Elite Championships begins on Friday at the home of Irish Boxing.
Among the competitors are double Olympic Champion Kellie Harrington, Paris Olympians Daina Moorehouse, Jenny Lehane, Michaela Walsh, Jude Gallagher, Dean Clancy and Jack Marley – alongside Olympian and 2025 World champ Aoife O’Rourke, Paris Olympian and 2025 World bronze medalist Grainne Walsh, and 2025 World bronze medalist Patsy Joyce.
The boxers will descend on the National Stadium from clubs in counties Antrim (11), Cork (2), Down (2), Dublin (23), Galway (7), Kildare (3), Leitrim (2), Louth (1), Mayo (3), Meath (2), Offaly (2), Roscommon (2), Tyrone (1), Waterford (4), Westmeath (5), Wexford (1), and Wicklow (1). There are two Elite champions-by-walkover: Emma Keating of Paulstown BC, Kilkenny at 80kg and Cliona D’Arcy of Tobar Pheadair BC, Galway at 80+kg
Olympian Jude Gallagher of Two Castles Olympic BC, Tyrone, and 2024 European Champion Shannon Sweeney of St. Anne’s BC Mayo, will be in action on the opening night of competition.
The Elite Championships are Ireland’s premier amateur boxing tournament, first hosted in 1922 at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin after an earlier All-Ireland event in 1920, and eventually finding a permanent home at the purpose-built National Stadium in 1939.
Double Olympian and multiple Commonwealth Games medalist Michaela Walsh of Holy Family GG Belfast holds the record for the most Elite titles, having won her 13th at the 2025 National Elite Championships.
Sport for Business Perspective
This promises to be a great few weekends of action, bookending the launch of the new visual and brand identity for the sport here in Ireland. We will have full coverage of that next week.
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