Gold at the end of Rainbow in PCYC

Richard Harvey | 4th November 2009

Hervey Bay’s Courtney Rainbow before her impressive Muay Thai bout with Josea McIvor.

COURTNEY Rainbow was a big hit at the Hervey Bay PCYC.

Just ask the girl she beat to win the Queensland Muay Thai Pinweight (42kg) title.

The 12-year-old Rainbow, who is trained by Craig Glover at Hervey Bay’s Street Smart Thai Boxing Centre, crushed Josea McIvor from Cooktown to get her hands on her first state title.

Rainbow won it in style as well.

The referee stepped in to stop the fight in the fourth of the five scheduled rounds after McIvor had copped a non-stop barrage from Rainbow that started from the opening bell.

Glover, who has trained Rainbow for four years, said his young charge had been in stunning form on the night.

“Courtney gave the other girl a real hammering,” Glover, whose wife Laura is a former Muay Thai World champion, said.

“She just keeps getting stronger and stronger with each fight.”

But what makes the win even more impressive is that Rainbow hadn’t trained as much as she or Glover would have liked before the bout.

“She wasn’t well and couldn’t train for something like four weeks,” Glover said.

“So to win like she did was real impressive.”

Rainbow’s title winning-performance was the only success for the locals.

All three other title bouts, which were all boxing ones, ended in defeats.

Queensland champion, Hervey Bay’s Matthew Casboult, lost in his Australian title fight against Jason Cooper from Deception Bay after the referee stopped the fight in the second round.

Charley Needles and Hayden Barker were the other fighters to lose their bouts.

Although he was disappointed not to see more of his fighters win a title, Glover said the two-day event had proved to be popular with spectators.

“All up I think we had over 1600 fight fans here over the two nights – that was an excellent turnout and they were not disappointed,” he said.