Barry ‘could have won gold’

Press, 11 October 1982, Page 40

Barry ‘could have won gold’

Bj

JOHN COFFEY

It was with mixed emotions that the Christchurch light heavyweight boxer. Kevin Barry, stepped up to receive his bronze medal on the final night of the Commonwealth Games tournament at the Festival Hall in Brisbane. Barry. naturally. was proud to be among the medal-winners, but his feelings were tinged by the knowledge that, but for the six stitches inserted above his left eye, he could have been standing on the top rung of the victory dais.

The only unbeaten athlete among the hundreds who gained third-place medals at the 1982 Games, Barry had to sit and watch two very ordinary performers, Fine Sani (Fiji) and Jonathan Kirisa (Uganda), in a lethargic

final to the 81kg division. “I was very disappointed to have to accept third best to those two," Barry said after his return to Christchurch yesterday. “The final was an appalling affair. They hardly landed 10 punches in the whole fight. If I couldn’t have beaten either of them, then I may as well give the game away.” In Barry’s estimation the Fijian and Ugandan representatives would not have been among the three most proficient of the 10 light heavyweight contestants. “When I dropped out, I thought Benny Pike would win,” Barry said. Pike was the most experienced of the light heavyweights, having had about 350 bouts in Australia and for his country at international level, although a points loser to Barry in the Oceania Games earlier this

year. Pike, however, was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Joseph Poto (Zambia) when the Zambian benefited from a controversial points decision. But the Australian still had an influence on the outcome.

"The Zambian had taken such a beating from Pike’s punches that he could not keep his guard up in the semi-final.” Barry said. As a result, Poto was knocked out by Sani. who went on to meet Kirisa — the recipient of a default when Barry was ruled out — for the gold and silver medals.

Sani, helped by the circumstances, became Fiji’s first Commonwealth Games boxing champion. But, says Barry, “he was nothing — if Pike had got the nod in that earlier fight, he would have knocked the Fijian over.”

A piece of floating gristle above Barry’s left eyebrow and a weighty punch from a Western Samoan, Irwin Ah Hoy, cost Barry his chance to go for gold. For several anxious moments of his debut Barry feared that he would be deprived of an opportunity to do battle for the bronze.

"Dripping blood feels different from dripping sweat." Barry said, and it was blood that he felt on his cheek after a clash of heads with Ah Hoy. Barry was examined by the ring-side doctor, and allowed to continue to a comfortable points win. “It was suggested that it be stitched after the fight, but Les (Rackley, his trainer) fixed it up,” and Barry next met a Kenyan, Raphae Mudire, in the quarter-finals, with at least a bronze reward for the winner.

Conscious of the vulnerability of his own injury, Barry sensed his moment when the Kenyan, too, suffered a cut. “I rushed in and gave him a couple and the doctor ordered it stopped."

Ironically, the blood coming from Barry was not from his mishap two nights earlier. His forehead was bleeding a little, and one stitch was inserted later, in addition to the six above his evebrow.

The decision that Barry could not compete again was made by an Australian doctor, who diagnosed a torn eye muscle, and ordered the stitching.

Barry, who had his twentythird birthday yesterday, will not decide his boxing future until after the New Year — “I am a bit in two minds at present,” he said.