Rochester's Louise boxes clever to take gold

St. Mary's Amatuer Boxing Club's Louise Orton, one of only two female boxers at the club, won a gold medal in the Haringey Box Cup at Alexandra Palace last weekend.

Around 450 young boxers took part in the competition, with Louise's victory coming in the Class B under-60g ladies category. She scored a points victory against Louise Mitchell from Scotland, winning the three, two minute rounds. St.Mary's coach Dave Bowler called her victory the cherry on the cake, after fellow clubman Dan Woledge had earlier won the English National Junior Championships. Dan has been invited to join the GB Boxing London 2012 camp to gain experience for Rio 2016 and may be a flag bearer during their Olympic bouts.

In other sport news, brothers Luke and David Wooder from Chatham had a great day at round three of the Super One National Kart Championship. Luke finished second in the Honda Cadet class, which was enough for him to extend his lead to 11 points overall, whilst older brother David took a two point lead after a storming victory in the Mini Max race.

In athletics, Medway and Maidstone AC runners David Harmer and Nathan Wilkins came 1st and 2nd respectively in the Podplus 3 Lakes 5km race at Ashford, while hurdler Jack Green, who used to live in Snodland, has made it into the full national squad for the Olympics, now less than one month away. He finished second to world champion and training partner Dai Greene at the trials, coming through in the last 150m and admitting he'll need to run better to make the Olympic final. You can read an interview I did with him here, just as he was making his breakthrough into Team GB in 2010. 

Also selected for the London Olympics is Chatham born hockey player, Ashley Jackson, who's confident of Team GB's medal chances. The 24 year old attacking midfielder is a short corner specialist and has scored 66 goals in 123 international appearances for England and Great Britain. He's twice been named in the world team of the year and is a former world young player of the year. The Olympic campaign begins against Argentina on July 30th.