Sign of dad's popularity
Aug 15 2008 By Stuart Rayner, The Journal
Tony Jeffries is eight minutes away from an Olympic medal. But on the eve of the biggest fight of his boxing career, the light heavyweight tells Stuart Rayner is happy to share the limelight with his biggest fan.
THE Olympic Games has a habit of turning sporting unknowns into household names but Tony is not the only member of the Jeffries family whose profile has risen dramatically during the Beijing boxing tournament.
The endearing story of “Jaffa” – the 23-year-old from Sunderland who went from owning a burger van outside the Stadium of Light to fighting for an Olympic medal – has brought the modest amateur boxer into the limelight. Jeffries takes on Hungary’s Imre Szello in the quarter-finals of the light heavyweight competition on Tuesday (2.01pm British time), knowing a win will guarantee him a place on the impressive list of British medalists in China.
Since he flew out to the Far East to support his son Tony’s manager, his dad Phil, has proved a popular figure with the local and national media in this country – and his new-found fame has apparently even reached China!
“I’ve been hearing from the people back home that my dad’s been doing loads of interviews since I’ve been out here. It sounds like he’s done more than me!” Tony said. “I was signing autographs after my fight on Thursday and people were coming up to him asking for his!”
Proudly wearing his Sunderland football shirt and waving the Union Jack he smuggled into the Workers Indoor Arena, Phil has been Tony’s biggest fan in Beijing, just as he has been throughout his son’s career. But Jeffries has been blown away by the support he has received since he has been out at the Games.
“There were loads of fans at my first fight (on Thursday), about six or seven thousand I think,” he said. “The only British supporters I’ve really talked to have been my dad and my friends who are out here, plus the family and friends of the other boxers but the support for us in the Arena has been brilliant. You can’t really hear them because they’re so far away from the ring and during the fight you block it all out afterwards but you can see all the Union Jacks and it’s nice afterwards when you’re doing all the media interviews and you can hear them all cheering.
“It’s been the same back home. I’ve had so many messages of support on my Facebook page that it’s been impossible to reply to them all but I just want everyone who’s sent one to know they really mean a lot to me. Thanks very much.”
When Jeffries enters the ring on Tuesday he will be four two-minute rounds away from an Olympic medal but the man from Sunderland has already said he did not travel to Beijing just to reach the semi-finals. Ireland’s Kenny Egan, who beat Jeffries in the final of June’s European Union Championships in Poland, looks the biggest threat to Jeffries’ gold medal hopes but he believes the competition is wide open.
“Kenny Egan’s going to be one of the fighters to watch out for in this competition,” he predicted. “The silver medalist from Athens (Magomed Aripgadjiev) has gone out, as have the gold and silver medalists (Abbos Atoev and Artur Beterbiev) from the World Championships is out so it’s going to be wide open. I’m just trying to concentrate on my next fight and not look too far ahead of myself. All I’m concentrating on is beating Szello.”
To find out more about Tony Jeffries, visit his website, www.tonyjeffries.com
