Phil Sutcliffe competed in the men's bantamweight boxing at two consecutive Olympic Games - the 1980 Moscow Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Games - finishing =17th on each occasion and winning four Irish national senior titles across his career.
A member of Drimnagh Boxing Club in Dublin, he had won European Championship bronze medals at two different weight classes on both sides of the Iron Curtain - at light-flyweight in Halle, East Germany in 1977, and at bantamweight in Cologne, West Germany in 1979 - making him one of the most decorated members of the Irish boxing team at the time of Moscow.
At Moscow 1980, he lost a unanimous decision to his Mexican opponent. At Los Angeles in 1984, he was eliminated by Italy's Maurizio Stecca, who went on to win the bantamweight gold medal. As Dr Tom Hunt records, Sutcliffe went on to become one of the most significant figures in Irish boxing, coaching successive generations of Irish fighters at Drimnagh and Crumlin Boxing Clubs.
His son Philip Sutcliffe Jnr also became a prominent Irish boxer.
Boxing
