Last year Emile Richardson was named the North Island Golden Gloves middleweight champion – this year, he holds the top spot in New Zealand.

In February, Richardson, 21, took on a boxer from the West Coast in the New Zealand Elite Boxing Trials at the Auckland Boxing Association to be given the number one ranking in middleweight in New Zealand.

The trial was also a way to secure Richardson's spot for qualifications for the Olympic Games. It involved one fight straight final.

Richardson was number two ranked just last year but now that he's taken that top spot, he has set his focus on one more goal – being selected for next year's Olympic Games.

"I won that New Zealand number one spot, now it's time to take on the world," Richardson says.

"The Olympics have been my goal since I started."

Winning the North Island Golden Gloves title last year, followed by the number one ranking in New Zealand this year, means is now on the right track to being selected.

"Now I've just got to focus on qualifiers for the Olympic Games in September."

Training for Richardson will be intense up until the qualifiers, as will the fights he has planned. He has a handful of international fights coming up, three of those with Australian boxers.

But sporting success runs in the family for Richardson. The late Sir Colin Meads is a cousin. His uncle Leigh Meads was an Olympic boxer who qualified for the 1984 summer Olympics in LA and cousin, Justin McDermott, is a Muay Thai champion and owns the ROC gym in Taupō.

"It runs in the family really. I was always going to be either a boxer or a rugby player."

Now that the Olympics are in sight, everything Richardson has given up is starting to become worth it.

"I've had to sacrifice a lot of things because of training but I want that Olympic spot so bad.

"Boxing is just incredible. I can't see myself doing anything else. Training so hard makes the results in the long run worth it."

He regularly travels to Rotorua where his trainer Rex Jenkins is based and where he gets plenty of sparring practice.

It has taken him five years of training, and four years of fighting, to get to this stage and he is more than ready to battle it out for a spot in the Olympics.

Richardson is now in preparation to compete in the seventh Thailand open international boxing tournament.

-Stuff.co.nz/Steph_Rangi