LOOMING as a major rival for Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Carlo Paalam for the gold in the tough featherweight division of boxing in the Paris Summer Games is youthful American Pan American Games champion Jahmal Harvey.
“I’m super confident, I’m super motivated and I’m training hard. I am expecting nothing less than gold,” Harvey, 21, told The Ring writer Anson Wainwright in an interview that was posted on the revered US boxing magazine’s website last Wednesday (Tuesday in the US).
At 19, Harvey burst into the world amateur boxing scene in 2021 capturing the gold medal in the AIBA World Boxing Championships in Belgrade Serbia with an impressive unanimous decision win over veteran Serik Temirzhanov of Kazakhstan.
Underscoring that the victory was no fluke, the ambidextrous fighter whipped Cuban Saidel Horta 5-0 in the featherweight finals of the Pan American Games held in Santiago, Chile last year to book his ticket to Paris.
Given his success at the elite level, the Oxon Hill, Maryland native said that he did not feel any pressure despite bearing the burden of breaking the 20-year-old golden jinx of the US in Olympic boxing since Andre Ward won the light heavyweight mint in the 2004 Athens Olympiad when he was just two years old.
“There’s really no pressure, I’m not thinking too much about it. Yes, gold is gold but if I didn’t get it, there really wouldn’t be any pressure. I’m just happy I’m doing something with my life, making my family proud,” the boxer said.
“Nobody can take away all the years I’ve put in to come to achieve this goal. At the end of the day, I’m doing this for myself, not everybody else.”
Harvey is a member of the eight-man US Olympic boxing squad coached by Englishman Billy Walsh, who brought several former Olympians to the team’s training camp in Colorado Springs to provide his wards some pep talk.
“I’ve been around Olympians at the Olympic training center,” Harvey recalled. “We just recently had a family function where they brought in past Olympians, they brought in Olympians dating back to 1996, 2000, 2004 and so on. I’ve got good information from that. I spoke to Mikeala Mayer, Richard Torrez, Queen Underwood etc.”
He disclosed that the common advice he got was that “distractions were the biggest thing.
They said be focused on the fight, you don’t want outside distractions, like tickets or where your family are staying. The Olympics is a beautiful thing, but you want to stay focused.”
The boxer hinted that returning home without the mint around his neck would be something of a disappointment.
“It would mean a lot to me, my dream was to get to the Olympics, after that I have to get the gold,” he said. “That’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that you had set back when you were a teenager. It would make me very happy.
“That would be great to put my name down with legends, mark me down in the history books for years and years to come.”
Standing in his path, of course, is Paalam, who will also be just as keen on bringing pride and glory to the Philippines in finally clinching the elusive Olympic boxing gold that has eluded the country for a century of participation at the Summer Games.
