THE BEST OF 2010: Simon Vallily announces himself on Commonwealth Games stage

By Daniel Schofield,

JUST under 90 minutes and 400 yards separated teenager Tom Daley winning Commonwealth diving gold and boxer Simon Vallily taking the heavyweight title in Delhi.

THE BEAST: Simon Vallily certainly made an impression en route to gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi (Reuters)

But while they both shared top spot on the podium in India, in every other respect their lives have been worlds apart.

One looks like they have stepped out of Tommy Hilfiger casting catalogue; tanned, good looking, and at just 16 had the world’s media eating of his hand in the mixed zone.

The other flashed the sort of menace towards inquisitors that had disposed of Northern Ireland’s Stephen Ward in just over a minute of the Commonwealth final.

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It was no surprise that it was the Plymouth teenager rather than the Middlesbrough pugilist that graced the back and front pages of the following day’s newspapers.

Vallily, it is safe to say, will never be the Daily Mail’s poster boy having been sentenced to four years in a young offenders institution for an unprovoked knife attack in a high street.

Perhaps that was the product of a youth that had little guidance since a failed trial at Middlesbrough and while using boxing to harness violence might seem like a contradiction in terms, the sport has given Vallily discipline, structure and most of all purpose.

“Boxing has kept me on the straight and narrow,” he said. “I have kept my head down.

“Where I come from I can show the younger lads the right way.

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“If you are good at something, stick at it and in the end it will pay off.

“I have proved a lot of people wrong. I have got a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games and a lot of people back home wouldn’t think I am where am now, so I’m over the moon.

“I have kept my head down and I am at training in Sheffield Monday to Thursday. It is brilliant set-up there and I want to stay there.”

The 25-year-old’s break came when he was able to win the ABA Championship in 2008 and a place on the GB amateur set-up under Rob McCracken in Sheffield.

Under McCracken, also Carl Froch’s ring man, Vallily has developed a devastatingly powerful jab and a body shot that sent three opponents to the canvass in the Talkatora Stadium – a fourth, Awusone Yekeni, withdrew from their semi-final match. 

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There’s no doubt he was the most impressive boxer in the Commonwealths, which unlike certain other events does attract a world-class field, and now McCracken has two years to add the tools and know how to make him an Olympic champion.

On the same November night that Vallily defeated Danny Price to become Great Britain champion, Audley Harrison was demonstrating while Olympic gold is not the guarantee of professional success it once was in his humiliating loss to David Haye.

But Vallily’s reliance on raw power rather than Harrison’s hit-and-run tactics suggests a far brighter future in the professional ranks.

2012, yet alone the five years he would probably have to wait for a title shot, are a long time away and Vallily is only ever a sparring accident away from seeing his dreams disappear.

But one of the joys of being a sports reporter is that, much like a much like a music geek who goes to tiny gigs in the hope of seeing the next Beatles, you have the opportunity to say I was there when a star was born.

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And the unfortunate Ward may well be remembered as the first victim of Britain’s next heavyweight champion of the world.