Bodo Andreass: Commonwealth Games coach profile
Issue: Volume 29 Number 1
Although coach Bodo Andreas deemed them a ‘very inexperienced’ squad, the 10 boxers competing for Australia at the Commonwealth Games came home with six medals — two golds and four bronze medals.
Three of the bronze medals went to boxers Luke Jackson (57kg), Lenny Zappavigna (60kg) and Steven Rudic (91+kg) who were competing in their first Commonwealth Games. The fourth went to Ben McEachran who repeated his bronze medal performance of Manchester with bronze in the light heavyweight division.
Andreas rates the result rate pretty highly. Until the Manchester Games four years ago, Australia’s best had been two gold and one silver in 1958 and two gold and two bronze in 1962. At Manchester, the boxing squad brought home three gold and a bronze.
‘I predicted we’d bring home four medals,’ Andreas says of the Melbourne Games. ‘We had almost a perfect preparation with the World Championships in China last November, the two international tournaments in the beginning of 2006 in Norway and Hungary and our dual match in February in Melbourne against Croatia.
‘We also had a ten-day training camp in Melbourne prior to the Games.’
Andreas says the results were testament to this preparation but adds that the boxers had another interesting advantage — the new Signature custom-fitted mouthguard that each Australian boxer used.
The mouthguard has been fashioned so that it’s comfortable enough to wear even between rounds, allowing for more time to concentrate on strategies.
But it’s the combination of factors which Andreas says really contributed to the results. ‘Boxers have to have good physical and mental fitness and the willingness to win gold. The draw can play a big role too,’ he says.
Among the standout performances, he cites team captain Jarrod Fletcher’s gold medal. Fletcher made his Commonwealth debut in Manchester as an 18-year-old, finishing fifth in the welterweight division. Two years later he failed to make the Australian squad for the Athens Olympics, losing in the Australian titles to Gerard O’Mahony.
The ‘wake up’ call helped him re-double his efforts to make the Australian team for Melbourne. He received another ‘wake up’ call during his gold medal match against big hitting Canadian Adonis Stevenson when he hit the canvas toward the end of the second round. He later referred to it as a ‘mind lapse’ but rallied to claim a 34-18 points victory.
Gold also went to team-mate 24-year-old Brad Pitt. Pitt became Australia’s first Commonwealth Games heavyweight champion with a win over Indian Harpreet Singh 25-10.
Coach Andreas says the boxing squad will now take a break before preparing themselves for the Australian titles in Darwin in July.
