Two boxers from Cardigan have been hailed as hope for the future of the sport at an Olympic level.

In an annual review published this month Team GB’s Chef de Mission, Mark England OBE, talked of the challenge of having to build a new GB boxing team after the departure of 10 of the 11 boxers that competed at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Despite this, he is confident that Paris 2024 will bring Britain more boxing success. The review has named Cardigan’s Croft twins, Garan and Ioan, as two of the reasons for this.

Ten of Team GBs 11 boxers left to pursue professional careers after the team’s success at Tokyo 2020.

Despite the loss of these experienced boxers, GB Boxing’s newly published Annual Review 2021-22, Sustaining Success offers an optimistic view of the future and points to the achievements of a new generation including Ioan and Garan Croft, who have all won major championship medals since Tokyo.

Other boxers promising a strong Paris 2024 Olympic squad include Demie-Jade Resztan, Kiaran MacDonald, Reese Lynch, Croft, Harris Akbar, Lewis Richardson, Sam Hickey, Lewis Williams and Delicious Orie.

The report says that the men’s European championships in Yerevan, Armenia in May 2022 was further evidence that this new group of boxers was getting-to-grips with the demands of top-class international boxing.

At Yerevan the team took home eight medals with Garan Croft taking silver in the light-middleweight final and a bronze medals for Ioan.

Garan was beaten by teammate Harris Akbar, who described him as ‘an immense fighter’.

Sustaining Success says that the eight-medal haul was the second-best performance in history at the European championships by a group of men from Great Britain.

“It was a strong indication that the post-Tokyo rebuilding programme was succeeding and provided significant reasons to be optimistic for the future,” it said.

The report also credits the European U22 Championships in March 2022, in which the brothers both won silver medals, as ‘an important marker as it created real belief amongst the squad’.

The report described the Yerevan victory as ‘a fantastic end to a momentous year’.

“It gave everyone connected with the WCP a huge lift as it showed that we are heading in the right direction and that this new group of boxers have what it takes to win medals at major international championships,” said the report.

“It ..has given everyone at GB Boxing the confidence to believe we can continue to sustain the success we have enjoyed over the last decade.”

The Croft twins hail from the small Pembrokeshire village of Crymych, which has around 800 inhabitants They began boxing at Cardigan ABC at the age of eight.

At 17, the pair moved up to Cardiff to train with the Wales team, and in January they were selected for the Great Britain Podium Squad at the Team GB training camp at Sheffield.