Lightweight Ennis boxer Paddy Donovan reached the finals of the World Junior Championships in St Petersburg Russia today with an unanimous points victory over Marrambek Kaikuev from Kyrgyzstan .
Donovan, a pupil of Rice College in Ennis and boxing out of the OLBC in Limerick has made spectacular progress in the championships to date winning all of his previous bouts by unanimous decisions .
He outboxed the Armenian Koryan Astoyan in the preliminaries before comprehensively outpointing Marrambek Kaikuev from Kazakhstan in the quarter-finals .
This morning’s semi-final against the American Champion Pascal Gauttier was a cracker and Donovan had to use all of his southpaw skills to reach tomorrows final .
He will meet the Turkish champion tomorrow morning with silver or gold on offer, and Irish coach Billy McClean is confident that his charge will win the gold .
Fellow townie Martin J Mongan made his exit from the championships when he was beaten by Russian Heavyweight Dmitri Fominykh at the weekend in a titanic battle .
