Anthony Joshua - King of the Ring. Frank Worrall
Joshua was a winner, pure and simple. He went into every bout expecting to win, knowing he had done everything in his power to achieve that ambition, and his optimistic outlook meant that he had the mental strength to back up his ever more powerful physique. Those long hours with the GB boxing team trainers at the Sheffield Institute of Sport had paid off. Anthony was a different man from the one who had tentatively sparred for the first time back in 2008. Gone was the callow youth; in his place was a formidable, super-fit athlete, who would become even more powerful as the years rolled on. The evolution of Anthony Joshua, boxing golden boy, was well under way by the time of the Olympics that glorious summer of 2012.
Anthony would be the first to doff his cap and admit that he owed a hell of a lot to one man, in particular, as he went for gold: Rob McCracken, the supremo of GB Boxing and, ultimately, the man who would work for him, training him and encouraging him in his corner as his full-time coach during that super-fight with Wladimir Klitschko almost five years later. As GB Boxing’s Performance Director Rob had worked miracles even prior to the Olympics. It was down to his efforts, his vision and his belief that Great Britain could reign supreme once again in the annals of amateur boxing, that the country would end up with three champions during the event. And that was a considerable achievement, given that three years previously he had taken over a squad that was in disarray and with extremely low morale, having left the World Championships in Milan with zero success. No medals and no hope.
That was all about to change under McCracken’s brilliant, sometimes belligerent guidance. The has-beens would be shaken up and knocked into shape, the end result being the golds that Anthony, Nicola Adams and Luke Campbell would win in London. It helped, of course, that Rob knew about the art of boxing from his own experiences at the coalface – he himself had turned pro in 1991 in the Light-Middleweight division and, three years later, won the British title by outpointing Andy Till. In November 1995, he moved up to Middleweight and won the Commonwealth title by outpointing Canadian southpaw Fitzgerald Bruney. Eventually, he had so much success that he was considered the Number One challenger in the WBC rankings. Rob retired from the ring with a record of 33 wins and 2 losses, including 19 knockouts.
All this meant that he knew what he was talking about as head coach of the Olympics team and, just as importantly, the boxers under his command knew what he was talking about given his background, experience and record as a boxer. He had been there and done it, and had the T-shirt to prove it after fighting his way through so many bouts himself over an educational decade. As he would tell BBC Sport, ‘Dedication and discipline are keys to producing a tremendous boxer, regardless of what talent he or she has got. But you learn from your mistakes and every mistake I made I pass on to the boxers and make sure they don’t do it.’
It wasn’t just the training and sparring, though. McCracken revolutionised GB Boxing with many other innovations, including concentrating on nutritional and medical well-being, as he explained: ‘My job was to get the right team in place, bring more coaches in, more support staff, which means we can have more boxers training with us. We’ve embraced sports science. The first thing I did when I came in was let these people practise their techniques, crack on with what they’re trained in. If a fighter doesn’t make it, they’ve only got themselves to blame. They’re full-time athletes, everything is catered for on the medical and nutritional side, they’re told what to do when they go home. They get every chance to succeed.’
This advanced approach was music to Anthony’s ears. He loved innovation and anything ‘hi-tech’ that could help raise his own game – as we will note in a later chapter about how he set up his own specialist team when he turned professional. Anthony knew at once that McCracken could bring that extra edge to his boxing; that this was a man who could indeed take him to the next level, with his team of strength coaches, nutritionists, physios and performance analysts, and he was delighted that Rob was to be his Olympics supremo.
In 2011, Rob told the press how the build-up to the Olympics was panning out. He admitted he was pleased with the way Anthony and the others were working towards their goal and how they were coping with changes in the rules and his innovations at the Sheffield centre of excellence. He said, ‘In terms of preparation, the big improvements I’ve seen are in the way the squads have adapted to international boxing: to the new scoring system and the change to 3x3 rounds. They are very professional for youngsters. They have travelled the world and are not fazed by anything. I’m very pleased with the way the boxers are developing.’
Anthony received an early Christmas present at the start of December 2011, when it was announced he had made the cut for London 2012 and would be part of the Olympics squad. It was a massive achievement, and he had celebrated by first telling his beloved mum, Yeta, and enjoying a cup of tea with her. Then it was down to London and the Olympic Stadium to pose for pictures for the next morning’s sport back pages of the national papers, and to give his views on how he saw the bouts panning out for the GB hopefuls. Anthony was one of five boxers who had been officially selected for the London Games after sealing their qualification at the World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, in October. The others were flyweight Andrew Selby, bantamweight Luke Campbell, light welterweight Tom Stalker and welterweight Fred Evans. Anthony told reporters how effective the Sheffield centre had been in helping him make the Olympics cut. He said: ‘GB Boxing have got a lot of Lottery funding now. They’ve got coaches there, they’ve also got a nutritionist, a psychologist, a physiotherapist and I think we’re being very well prepared. Behind the fists, there is a lot of science. It’s about leaving no strand unturned and going in there with every advantage. It just makes you so much more difficult to beat if you can do that.’
Rob McCracken congratulated the famous five, saying, ‘Since I took over as Performance Director in November 2009, the GB Boxing squad has performed consistently well at major championships. To secure five Olympic qualifiers at our first opportunity was very satisfying and a great achievement by the boxers who have all worked hard to secure this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete at a home Olympics. The five boxers are all a credit to the squad and if they box to their full potential then every one of them has the talent and ability to do well and secure a medal.’
Matt Holt, the Programme Director for GB Boxing, was also confident of success, saying, ‘We’re in a great place. The successes that we’ve had across the three major championships this year have been absolutely fantastic. At the men’s Europeans we put two of our boxers on the gold medal podium and they both qualified for the Olympic Games. In Baku, we had three boxers get to the final, which has never been done collectively by GB boxers before, so that was fantastic, too. We were a little bit disappointed that one of those silvers wasn’t converted into gold, but that’s what we’ll be hoping to do in London.’
The Sheffield centre had been a definite plus point as Anthony now fine-tuned his work there. It was plush and modern; a dream for kids like AJ who had been used to rough-and-ready boxing gyms and slumming it in B&B accommodation when training. Now they could train and develop in world-class surroundings with world-class facilities. Rob McCracken would later say it ‘covers everything including medical issues and physio, strength and conditioning, nutrition, psychology, lifestyle and performance analysis and has been a massive factor in our success, giving our boxers a performance edge over their opponents.’
The £1million state-of-the-art, purpose-built boxing gym opened in 2009 and would prove so positive for Anthony as an ideal working environment that he would use it even when he turned pro and won his world heavyweight titles, returning ‘home’ to enjoy the facilities that had helped him win gold in 2012.
An indication of its quality came a year after its official opening when the USA Boxing squad paid a visit. They had heard all about what was on offer but wanted to see for themselves if the hype was truly justified. They soon found that it not only was, but that it exceeded expectations and was, as the press would have it, ‘a knockout’. Ed Weichers, Head Coach for the USA’s boxing association, told reporters, ‘We have been training for the Atlantic Cup in London but really we were interested in the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. We know that if we’re going to have competitions in the UK we will be welcome to use this facility.
‘The venue is very impressive, they have everything we have. I love the utilisation of space with