Jon McConnell has already felt what it’s like to stand alone on top of a podium. Now he wants to feel it again – and keep feeling it.
The Belfast boxer, Commonwealth Games gold medallist at 70kg in Glasgow, heads to the European Elite Championships in Sofia this week with a clear template in mind. He’s seen how Kate O'Connor did it. Now he wants his own version.
O'Connor claimed Commonwealth heptathlon gold in July, took a brief pause, then marched straight into Birmingham and won European gold weeks later. That rapid-fire double has not been lost on McConnell.
"She is a big inspiration, winning the Commonwealths, had a week off and was back over in Birmingham to win [European] gold - hopefully I can replicate that," he told BBC Sport NI before flying to Bulgaria.
For McConnell, Glasgow was not a finish line. It was the starting gun.
The 23-year-old delivered Team NI’s only boxing gold at the Commonwealths, a breakthrough moment that had been years in the making. He had targeted that stage since childhood. Now it has only sharpened his appetite.
"I'm on the right road. The Commonwealths was a goal for me since I was a kid. It's given me a taste for more and the only way to get that buzz is to go out and win major championships."
Sofia offers the next step. The European Elite Championships begin on Thursday, and McConnell travels as part of a 14-strong Team Ireland squad, one that has already had to adjust. Kellie McLoughlin comes in at women’s lightweight after two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington pulled out with a hand injury.
Medals matter. They always do. But this tournament carries a second, quieter significance: a chance to measure themselves against the very fighters they expect to see again when the road to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles officially opens next year at the World Championships and European Games.
"It's going to be the same people you are boxing," McConnell pointed out.
He knows the landscape. He also knows what he wants from it.
"I take one fight and round at a time, but there is no reason why I can't be top of the podium as LA is my main goal.
I'm national elite champion two years in a row, so if I can make that three in January, I should go to the qualifiers next year, but these European Championships I want to put a marker down."
Ireland’s women have been the standard-bearers in recent continental campaigns. At the 2024 European Championships in Serbia, all four medals – two gold, two bronze – came from female boxers. Among them were Shannon Sweeney, who took 50kg gold and now competes at 48kg, and middleweight Aoife O'Rourke, who struck gold at 75kg.
Go back to Yerevan two years earlier and the picture shifts slightly. Gabriel Dossen climbed to the top of the podium, while Dylan Eagleson brought home silver. But at World Championship level, the men’s return has been thin: nine years without a male medal, Joe Ward’s silver the last, and Michael Conlan still the only Irishman ever to win world gold.
That’s the backdrop McConnell walks into. A gap in the record books. A sense that someone, soon, has to break it.
Interim head coach Damian Kennedy believes that moment is coming.
He has watched the squad since January and sees more than just effort. He sees change.
"Dean Clancy is going three fights deep into competitions on a regular basis, Jude Gallagher is going deep on a regular basis, Jack Marley is boxing the best I've ever seen him," Kennedy said.
"Sometimes success is measured in medals but that's not always the case as I've seen the progression here.
There are a number of athletes about to tip over the edge and when the floodgates open for the males, it will be amazing to watch."
McConnell wants to be part of that surge, not just carried by it. He has his model in O’Connor, his memories from Glasgow, his long-term target in Los Angeles.
Now comes Sofia, and the chance to prove that Commonwealth gold was not a one-off flash, but the first chapter of something far bigger.
