One punch from big bucks

Audley Harrison, poised to become Britain's first boxing gold medallist since Chris Finnegan won in Mexico City 32 years ago, briefly allowed himself the rare licence to dream last night of a lucrative professional future fighting the likes of Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson.

The list of successful British heavyweights is not one of the world's most demanding reads, but all logic suggests that tomorrow Harrison is about to swell the ranks, before embarking upon a belated professional career that could rapidly bring him into confrontation with the world's biggest names.

Harrison's sole obsession since he won gold in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur two years ago has been an Olympic gold in Sydney. Any amount of six-figure offers from professional promoters, added to the recognition that, at 28, time is short, has failed to deflect him from his driving purpose.

One more fight, a final against the bustling and unstylish Kazakhstan fighter Mukhtarkhan Dildabekov - the beaten finalist in last year's world championship, and the man who accounted for the fancied Cuban Alexis Rubalcaba in the quarter-finals - will be enough to realise his ambitions.

The boxer with the rainbow haircut (made up of a collection of coloured rubber bands) is about to discover that gold is buried at the end of his roots.

Unusually, though, for a fighter whose pride and workrate have been sustained by the vision of Olympic gold, Harrison dared at the height of his excitement at his 32-16 semi-final demolition of the Italian scuffler Paolo Vidoz to look ahead, already imagining himself competing with the likes of Lewis and Tyson.

"I don't know much about the Kazakhstani because he was not on my list of four most dangerous opponents," he said. "He's a soldier, so he is obviously going to have a tough heart. I am going to have to watch him a lot on video and get a picture in my head of how I am going to fight him. It is like facing any opponent; they all have their weaknesses. As a professional it could be Lewis, it could be Tyson, it could be anyone."

Even to imagine himself fighting Lewis, another former winner of Olympic gold and a boxer whom he has often praised as "setting the standard", indicated the level of Harrison's confidence.

In the ring, he exudes style. Outside the ring, his intelligence comes to the fore. That may explain why he boxes like a man who prefers not to be hit too much and leads some analysts to wonder whether his reserves of courage are deep enough to survive a professional career. They wondered the same about Lewis, although it has to be said that Lewis has a far more formidable bodyshape.

Harrison's importance to the amateur game, though, can hardly be exaggerated. He took it up only in his late teens and then interrupted his rise for the sake of his studies. To gain his degree in sports studies at Brunel University he wrote a 10,000-word dissertation on the future of British amateur boxing. He might have received an A grade had he summed it up in two words: Audley Harrison.

If Harrison wins gold, then Britain's struggling gyms, getting by on 8,000 amateur boxers, will expect an influx when the season starts next month. He believes that process has begun already. "Amateur boxing is alive and kicking now," he said, "and I'm glad that I am a part of it."

European fighters had four opportunities to claim one of the seven places in Sydney's super-heavyweight division, and Harrison, a notoriously slow starter, needed three of them. When he last fought Vidoz he beat him only 5-3 in a tight European qualifier in Athens nine months ago.

This semi-final was more clear-cut: the Italian bullishly pressed forward throughout but Harrison, noticeably light on his feet for a super-heavy, stepped up the tempo whenever it was demanded, especially later in each round as Vidox tired. He was 14-9 ahead at the halfway stage and the Italian was bleeding heavily from the nose. But Vidoz took the third round 5-3 to reduce the deficit to three points.

The final round emphasised Harrison's potential. He took it 15-2, with a flurry of combinations also cutting Vidoz above the left eye. The only confusion was why the fight was not stopped, under the new rules, 19 seconds from the end when Harrison had built a 15-point advantage. It caused him little concern. "This is one of the cleanest tournaments I have seen for years," he said.

That has not stopped some petty cheating. The boxers are not officially allowed to see the scores at the end of each round, even though they are displayed on hundreds of TV sets around the auditorium. This information is easily transmitted to the boxers' corners via mobile phones. In the other semi-final, as Dildabekov beat Uzbekistan's Rustam Saidov, both trainers were banished from the arena in the final round.

Harrison has the opportunity tomorrow to extend Britain's Olympic boxing record of 12 golds, only three of which have occurred since 1924: Finnegan in Mexico and Dick McTaggart and Terry Spinks in Melbourne in 1956.

Merely by reaching the semi-final, he was assured of Britain's first boxing medal since Robin Reid won bronze at light-middleweight in Barcelona eight years ago. But no Briton has won gold at the heaviest weight since Ronald Rawson in Antwerp in 1920. The Olympics does not entirely support the image of a nation of fighters.