O'Rourke sisters add to remarkable medal with golds at European Elites

One of Aoife O’Rourke’s first acts after taking the honours in the 75kg at the European Elite Boxing Championships in Sofia was to reach into the front row of the viewing area and hug her sister Lisa whose golden moment had come the day before.

The Roscommon pair can now lay claim to ten major medals between them at senior level, eight of them gold, and that doesn’t count the pair of U22 European titles Lisa mined for herself back in 2022 and 2024.

It’s a stunning haul for the siblings whose efforts, allied to bronze medals won by Michaela Walsh and Jon McConnell, left Ireland in fifth place in the overall table at these latest championships.

Aoife secured what was her fifth senior title at a continental level with a dominant 5-0 defeat of Busra Isildar. The Turkish boxer is a multiple World and European medalist, but she had no answer to the Roscommon woman.

“It’s genuinely hard to sum up,” said the 29-year old. “We all want to get out and perform and reach this final stage but to actually have it happen again, not my first time, my fifth time, I honestly can’t believe it right now. I’m just really looking forward to enjoying the moment.” She started on the front foot and did continual damage with her left jab. So it went. The bout took on an air of the inevitable long before the end of round two with the large and loud Turkish support base falling all but silent by then.

The Moroccan judge awarded round three to the Turk but that was one of a kind with the final verdict coming in at 30;27, 30;27, 30:27, 30:26, 29:28 for a fighter who is now the reigning European and World champion following her triumph in Liverpool in 2025.

This makes for her fourth confederation level title after previous wins in 2019, 2022 and 2024. The two-time Olympian also claimed gold at the 2023 European Games. This one was all the more impressive for the difficulty of her route.

Earlier fights threw up extremely tough assignments but O’Rourke saw off the 80+kg world champion, Poland’s Agata Kaczmarska, as well as Russia’s 2025 world champion, Saltanat Medenova on split decisions.

Lisa, five years her junior, was an equally convincing winner in her 80kg final on Thursday, the judges calling it 4-1 in her favour after an impressive nine minutes against Anastasiia Demurchian of Russia. It was her first time fighting at the weight.

“The way we are now, we’re just riding the tide,” said Aoife. “We’ll look back when we’re older and think they are such special memories that we have created together and that it goes down in history being sisters on the same team.

“But, honestly, I have seen Lisa through all her injuries and to finish on top of the podium last night, no-one deserves it more. She genuinely put in the hard work behind the scenes to get to this moment.” McConnell and Walsh both brought momentum to Bulgaria after gold and bronze medals respectively at the recent Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. They put in some superb performances before falling at the semi-final stage.

Walsh spoke of a rising belief in herself this year, at the ripe old age of 33. That was apparent in two opening 5-0 wins against Montenegrin and Bulgarian opposition, the latter a particularly fine effort against a multiple major medalist competing on home soil.

A two-time Olympian, her semi-final loss came on a 4-1 scorecard when she was unfortunate to be behind after a tight first round and couldn’t make up the deficit against a technical and strategic Hungarian opponent.

McConnell needed four fights to earn his reward. He had to count for Turkish, Polish and Italian opponents, two of them Paris Olympians and the other a Mediterranean Games champion, before losing 4-1 to a tough Azerbaijani in his semi-final.

Fourteen Irish fighters had flown in to Sofia eleven days ago and they landed without two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington who had to withdraw with a hand injury. Her place in the lightweight ranks was taken by Kellie McLoughlin.

McLoughlin was one of five boxers – Shannon Sweeney, Jenny Lehane, Cliona D’Arcy and Gavin Rafferty being the others - to lose their opening bout. Dean Clancy, Daina Moorehouse, Jack Marley and Evelyn Igharo exited at the second attempt.

That cohort included four Paris Olympians, a former European champion and a World Youth champion, but the unluckiest not to medal was Jude Gallagher in the 60kg class.

Hugely impressive in his first two fights, the recent Commonwealth bronze medalist lost on a 3-2 split decision after a technical quarter-final against a Spanish opponent.