ALBION Park boxing star Sam Goodman has set his sights on Commonwealth Games gold after returning from the AIBA world championships with a bronze medal last week.
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The 18-year-old state and national champion won three fights in his 56kgs division to reach the semi-final before going down in a tough battle to Kazakhstan rival.
It’s an experience he believes will serve him well as he begins the qualification process for Gold Coast 2018.
“It was definitely the highlight of my boxing career so far,” Goodman said.
“It was the best feeling in the world to have Australia on your back and knowing you’re representing your country. It was a long time coming for me so to finally achieve it I was pretty rapt.
“My first three fights I felt I performed quite well but I fought a tough Kazakh fighter in the semi and didn’t quite execute the way I wanted to and I paid the price for it. It’s a big learning curve I’ll take out of it. You’ve got to take something out of every loss otherwise it’ll keep happening so I’m already looking at that and I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
It was his last tilt at a junior title with Goodman to step up to the open division in pursuit of a Commonwealth Games berth.
“My next big goal is aiming at the Commonwealth Games gold medal,” Goodman said.
“Qualifications start for that pretty soon so hopefully I can take this experience with me and be better for it. I’ve been fighting men since I was 14-15 so that’s not going to faze me. I’m just lookin forward to testing myself here and overseas against quality older opponents.”