Price: I just want a gold medal and then I will think about turning professional

13 April 2012

You are a qualified central heating engineer who has had whispers in his ear about earning a million or two to box for a living. Do you bite off the hands of those offering, or say 'Come back in four years, my country needs me'.

That just about sums up the dilemma facing David Price, Britain's team captain and super-heavyweight representative at the Olympics, a dilemma which, four years away from London 2012, is also confronting the rest of the team to a lesser degree.

If the Price is right: Success in Beijing would lead to a string of lucrative offers to turn professional for the boxing captain David Price

Price, as a super-heavyweight, will be the most in demand of the British crop from promoters such as Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy and Frank Warren if he goes through to the final here.

Audley Harrison, another Olympic super-heavyweight, signed television and sponsorship contracts worth £2million after he won the big boys' gold in 2000 and according to good judges, Price is not only bigger but better.

Frankie Gavin, Britain's only world champion on the Olympic team, believes so, saying: 'He's better than Audley ever was. He's the hardest trainer I've ever been with and he's not slow.'

That dig at Harrison, who none of the present team regard with much affection, complements another from team chief Terry Edwards, who also steered Harrison to his gold. 'David's more mobile, got a good boxing brain and a good heart,' he said.

Edwards wants the squad to stay together for another four years. He has been trying to persuade Amateur Boxing Association officials to find a corporate backer for the squad and the boxers' individual sponsors but, for the moment, he has nothing with which to tempt them to stay but honour.

Price is believed to be the most likely to take the professional promoters' money, for good reason.

He will be 29 before London, too old probably to start as a pro and he has a two-year-old daughter to support.

The Scouser, a fervent Liverpool fan who had a trial for the club's schoolboys before he found his talent was in his fists, is also the most marketable at 6ft 6in and more than 17 stone.

Yesterday, like the other seven in the team, he was boxing clever with his answers.

Nobody wants to be the one, least of all the captain, to floor the enthusiasm generated by a belief, as Gavin put it, that 'we can all win medals'. 'I'm after enjoying the experience,' said Price.

'It could be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion which could change my life. Let me enjoy it.

'I'm not going to decide anything until after I get home from the Olympics. This Olympics is different because the next one's in London. If it was in South Africa or somewhere we would all have decided by now, but it's London in 2012.'

He was the last man among the British team to qualify but only because he was dogged by ill luck. He qualified for the quarter-finals of the World Championships, with a place in the semis guaranteeing a trip to Beijing, but broke his hand.

In his second chance to make the Games at the first qualifying event, he lost controversially by two points to Azerbaijan's David Arshba, even though three of the five judges had him ahead and another level.

An appeal was lodged and Arshba was eventually disqualified when it was discovered that he was not eligible to represent Azerbaijan. However, instead of giving his place to Price, officials put the Englishman's name into a hat with the men Arshba defeated in the first and second rounds of the competition.

One of them, Finland's Robert Helenius was pulled out and reinstated. Price had the last laugh, though, coming through the second qualifying event in Athens in April.

A medal here - and the colour of it - would have a bearing on whether he goes pro. A gold would send him straight into the arms of the pros because he could not improve on it in four years.

Its value would be transferable into cash immediately. Anything less and he might just be tempted to hang on for 2012 if the ABA fulfils promises to add to their Lottery support, which the boxers claim were made two years ago and have yet to be kept.

'They told us there would be £20,000 paid for Olympic medals and then some for World Championship medals. What happened to all that?,' said Price. He admits to having had a pro offer already.

He turned it down. 'It was not massive money. They were trying to get me on the cheap by getting my signature before the Games,' he said.

'The Olympics is a good platform for us to sell ourselves but the money doesn't come into it. That's not why we're here.

'I've a good chance if I perform to the best of my ability. I've the ability on my day to beat everybody and if I give it 100 per cent, it's there for me. I've never been in better shape.'

Gavin, meanwhile, has beaten his weight problems so effectively that Edwards is concerned he is too trim.

'He was just 2lb above the limit yesterday and we're still training hard. I'd like a bit more flesh on him. But don't you concern yourself - Frankie is going to make the weight and win the gold medal,' said Edwards - to which Gavin quipped: 'As long as nobody buys me cake or ice-cream.'

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