Lewis advice pays off for Joshua (From Times Series)

Watford-born and Finchley ABC's super heavyweight Anthony Joshua to fight for London 2012 Olympic gold

6:47am Saturday 11th August 2012 in Sport

Anthony Joshua revealed how a piece of advice from Lennox Lewis helped him storm into the Olympic super heavyweight final at ExCeL last night and guarantee Great Britain's boxing team their most successful Games for more than a century.

Not since 1908 have four British boxers gone through to gold medal matches but Joshua followed the earlier lead of Fred Evans and Luke Campbell - and Thursday's historic triumph by Nicola Adams - to dispatch giant Kazakh Ivan Dychko 13-11.

The Watford-born boxer, who fights out of Finchley ABC, said: "I saw Lennox when he came to watch Nicola and he told me to back up with the jab. He started throwing jabs and shadow-boxing, which was great. He gave me some advice and I took it with me into this fight."

Lewis' hint proved a golden one as it was Joshua's lightning left hand which made all the difference over three cagey rounds, with the pair locked together through two before the Londoner's cleaner work in the last saw him home.

Joshua added: "I'm learning in every fight and I just hope I can go out and do this thing on Sunday. I can improve on my defence, my confidence and my self-belief. If I can become Olympic champion with so many errors, who knows what the future holds."