Waterford woman poised to make history at Paris 2024 Olympic Games later this month

A Waterford woman is poised to make history at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games later this month. 

Lynne McEnery will become Team Ireland’s first-ever woman Olympic boxing coach the moment she steps on the field of play.

A former elite international boxer in her own right, Lynne is a proud member of Waterford’s St. Paul’s BC. She contested for club and country at two Women’s European Championships (2011 – Netherlands and 2013 – Hungary).

In January of this year, Lynne became the inaugural female boxing High Performance staff coach, working daily with boxers preparing for, at that time, qualification for the Olympic Games. She was a key coach at the 2nd Olympic World Qualifier in Bangkok, where four more boxers qualified for Paris.

Since joining the IABA’s High Performance Unit, first as a member of the Paris Pool Coach Programme and then as staff, Lynne has coached at the prestigious Strandja Memorial Tournament, at the 2024 European Championships and at three multi-nations training camps hosted by IABA – with Ukraine, Spain, Turkey and France.

The Team Ireland Paris 2024 boxing team is over 50% female, with Ireland being one of only three countries in the world to have qualified women at all available weights. From a staff perspective, in addition to Lynne as a High Performance Coach, the team is led by High Performance Director, Tricia Heberle. Tricia is a hockey Olympian in her own right, and was Team Ireland’s Chef de Mission for the Tokyo Olympic Games.

The team is currently in a pre-Paris training camp in Germany, with the host nation, the USA, Cuba, Mongolia, India, Belgium, Sweden, the Philipines and others.

They will depart for Paris on July 22 with the draw set to take place on the afternoon of July 25, before boxing commences on July 27.