WITH what he describes as the best possible team behind him, Newport boxer Fred Evans is confident that he is on the right track to claim Olympic gold.

A ten-strong British team will head to London with Evans, the reigning European amateur champion at the 69kg welterweight class, a strong medal contender.

After being brought on by trainer Tony Borg at Newport’s St Josephs Gym, Evans is now part of the GB team headed up by Robert McCracken, a former British middleweight champion turned professional coach, who has guided Carl Froch back to the summit of the super middleweight division in world boxing.

With a top coach in his corner, along with nutritionist Mark Ellison, who also works for Manchester United, and a team made up almost entirely of world and European medallists, Evans admits that he feels good heading into the biggest event of his career.

“The set-up in Sheffield with Rob is basically professional, that’s my life and has been for the last few years, Monday to Thursday every week I turn up and train and it’s fantastic,” said the 21-year-old.

“I really am feeling the benefits, most of all from the sparring we get in Sheffield, you are fighting against lads that are at the top level.

“I have fought a lot of the people who will be at the Games already and I’ve got video footage of all of them as well.

“So I couldn’t be much better prepared. The last competitions I have entered, be that the Europeans, the Worlds, I have listened to the team and really stuck to what they have told me to do. “So that’s diet, training, the set-up that they have planned for me and it has done me proud, I won gold at the Europeans and I qualified for the Olympics at the Worlds.

“I won’t be changing anything now, it’s all worked so far and the team have said to me, get your mind right, get your training right and there’s no reason why I can’t leave these Games with the gold medal around my neck.”

And the Welsh fighter admits he cannot wait for that first ring walk on British soil on his Olympics debut. “We as a squad we are just counting down the days until we get in the ring. “I don’t want to let the crowd get to me that much, but once the bell goes to be honest everything else is just a blur.

“But it could work in my favour and hopefully in the later rounds I can use it to my advantage when my opponents start to tire.”

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