Nothing about Kellie Harrington’s career was inevitable. There was no pathway laid out for her, no fast-track to success. No slow-track, for that matter. It wasn’t just unlikely that she would end up becoming the first Irish boxer – male or female – to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals. It was, by all measures, unimaginable.
Who would waste time, breath or synapses on a dream like that?
Spin the tape back to Harrington as a young teenager, the girl her mam sent away to live in England for a while to keep her out of trouble. The girl who dropped out of school, who was lost, who felt like she didn’t belong anywhere. Nobody was predicting this life for her, least of all herself.
Yet there she was on a Tuesday night in August, with the whole country bobbing and weaving on their couches. Her Olympic final against China’s Yang Wenlu was the last bout of the night, delayed by a schedule that went long, meaning it didn’t start until just short of 10.30pm Irish time. And still, the viewing figures said 1.3 million people hung on to watch her. For context, the Toy Show got 1.6 million.
Think about that. This wasn’t an Ireland team in action. It wasn’t one of the big four sports. It wasn’t, frankly, a popular sport at all. For all our rich boxing history, it’s still a pretty niche pursuit in Ireland – the women’s side of it even more so. But that night, for those 11 minutes, 83 per cent of everyone who was watching a television in Ireland was watching Kellie Harrington.
Never mind when she was a teenager – she would have had trouble imagining that for herself as recently as April of this year. At the European Elite Championships in Belgrade, Harrington lost to Natalia Shadrina, a Russian fighter who declared for Serbia in 2021. It was the Dubliner’s first defeat in three years and the Olympic opening ceremony was 92 days away.
Sport owes you nothing. Olympic sport, even less. Katie Taylor did more to get women’s boxing into the Games than any fighter alive and still her Olympic journey ended with a split-decision defeat in her opening bout in Rio. Harrington had been the best fighter in Tokyo in 2021 but had made no secret of the fact that Paris was to be her last run on the hamster wheel. Dream endings are incredibly rare for a reason.
And of course, you had to throw into the mix the fact that Harrington had endured a torrid year out of the ring, entirely of her own making. A stupid tweet, a disastrous interview, an online viral shitstorm – it took a mental toll on her that raised huge doubts over what version of her would glove up in Paris. She had always used the backing of the Irish public as the coal in the stove. Now she wasn’t sure how much of it lay in ashes.
The thing with Kellie Harrington is that she finds it hard to wear a mask for long. She’ll do it when she needs to but it will take a supreme conscious effort on her part. It’s like she’s always pinching herself on the inside of her leg, reminding herself that she needs to keep a lid on the freewheeling, fandango part of her personality. Just for a little while longer.
That’s who she turned herself into throughout the Olympics. For whatever reason, the organisers put the early stages of the boxing tournament in the most run-down venue at the Games. It was held in an out-of-the-way industrial estate on the north of the city. Versailles, it was not.
But in a way, that suited Harrington. Her whole approach to the Games was to isolate herself, to keep the outside world out, to plunge herself into a tunnel of her own making that let in no light until she was standing on the podium at the end. She kept her post-fight interviews clipped and po-faced, ignoring the fact that the rest of the Irish boxing team was collapsing in a heap around her.
She kept the main thing the main thing. She put Alessia Mesiano and Angie Valdes away with perfunctory ease in her opening two bouts. She put on a show against world champion Beatriz Ferreira in an exhilarating semi-final, turning what had been a close fight her way in the final round, which she won on all judges’ cards.
It meant a second straight Olympic final – and a change of venue. But Harrington couldn’t have been less interested in the fact that her final was going to take place in the gilded surrounds of Court Philippe-Chatrier at Roland Garros. Novak Djokovic had won his gold medal on the same court just 36 hours earlier – the boxing had to start so late because the stadium had undergone a total refit in a day and a half.
None of it mattered. She turned up and fought and took all the drama out of the night. She won the first round, she won the second. Three of the judges had her in an unassailable 20-18 going into the final stanza. All she had to do was stay standing upright and the gold medal was hers. She knew it too – she let Yang do all the running and gave up a split decision along the way but none of that mattered.
Gold. Again.
Life goes on, of course. She is adamant that she has retired from international boxing but anyone snooping around her social media will see she hasn’t entirely given up on the life. It would be no shock to see her turn up at the nationals one of these years, just for the kicks of it. Her next act will be fascinating, whatever form it takes.
Double Olympic champion. The greatest Olympic boxer Ireland has ever known. Nothing left to prove to anyone.
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