THE PATH TO GREATNESS

THE FINEST AMATEUR YET?

VASILIY LOMACHENKO is often said to be the greatest amateur boxer of all time. You can see why. Hardly anyone has ever achieved what the Ukrainian has done. A two-weight Olympic gold medallist, winner of the Val Barker trophy in 2008 for the best boxer at the Games (and in 2012 he certainly had a shout for deserving a second Val Barker prize, though that would have been a feat without precedent). He was also a two-time World championships gold medallist and a European champion.

He is certainly the finest of the modern era, probably the best since Cuban legend Teofilo Stevenson and in the history of the amateur sport he is up there. He can be considered among the best, although Lazlo Papp, Hungary’s star of the 1950s, can probably be seen as the very best.

There was an aura about him in the amateur