There is no wintry trip back to Roscommon on Friday night for Ireland’s recently minted boxing world champion Aoife O’Rourke.
Her 5-0 win over Turkey’s Busra Isildar in Liverpool last month brought a second gold medal back to the O’Rourke household to neatly complete a family circle. Her sister Lisa, who is five years younger, was the 2022 world champion.
Although siblings have fought at major events before for Ireland − Aidan and Michaela Walsh competed in the Tokyo Olympics − sisters becoming boxing world champions is unparalleled.
But Aoife, also a three-time European champion, is shunning the farming comforts of Castlerea and jumping on a plane to Germany to compete in Hyrox Hamburg, a global fitness competition which she won earlier this year with Lisa, the pair becoming the World Hyrox doubles champions.
RM Block
Hyrox is a portmanteau combining the words: hybrid and rockstar. It is Ireland’s Fittest Family event at DEFCON 1 levels, where they run, push and pull sleds and lunge with sandbags.
“You’re always striving for more aren’t you,” she says. “We’re never happy and competitive by nature. Having won the European Championship, the World Championship was always the next step.
“It was always something I was striving for, especially seeing Lisa did it back in 2022. It was definitely a goal for me.
“The Hyrox, yeah I love training. It’s fitness, racing and it’s music to my ears. It’s a step away from boxing. I’ve done it individually, but I’ve also done it in doubles with Lisa.
“I didn’t know anything about it until one of the boxing coaches said, ‘It’s something I think you would like’.”
[ Aoife O’Rourke wins gold at World Boxing ChampionshipsOpens in new window ]
The months after World Championships are always decompressing times, with O’Rourke’s world title somewhat softening the hurt of not making the medal bouts at the Paris Olympic Games last year.
Losing in a split decision to Poland’s Elzbieta Wojick, who she had beaten six times before, stunned the Irish team and sent O’Rourke back to reset.
She met the disappointment with a stoic resolution to go back and make the little things better, stay in the minute, the second and never, ever lose the moment in competition.
“Just after Paris it was kind of an eye opener,” she says. “Don’t think long-term. Remain present. I definitely had goals of getting on better at the Olympics but that didn’t happen. It brings you back to enjoying the progress, enjoying the journey that I’m on and not getting too far ahead.
“It comes down to the small consistent habits that athletes build on a day-to-day basis. This is coming from years of building a foundation, bases. Technically you are also trying to improve.”
She says she learned “how to deal with the pressure and to remember you are doing it for you” from it.
[ Irish boxers return from World Championships with medals in towOpens in new window ]
“It shouldn’t be about pleasing anyone else. If I’m not happy on the journey there is no point in doing it. It’s about finding your happiness.”
The journey to LA 2028 may just provide that. The seismic shifts on boxing over recent years has also changed the weight categories at the Olympic Games. In previous Olympics the option was for one sister to drop to 66kg (10.3st), too much to shed for tall boxers, who are a much more comfortable fit at 70kg and more.
Now with LA providing 70kg and 75kg divisions, it means both can have a shot at converting world medals into Olympic medals.
That at least is the deliciously tempting possibility, one she understands is fraught with pitfalls.
“If that does happen, that the two of us are representing Ireland for boxing in LA, it would be an incredible story,” she says.
“To go to an Olympics with a sibling would be amazing, really, truly special. We have already achieved the Hyrox success, also for the boxing getting the silver medals and both being world champions ... you are always striving to be the best.
“Yes, I have achieved a world champion medal there but there’s no doubt I’ll have setbacks between now and LA. It’s about taking things in small pieces and breaking them down, not getting ahead of yourself.
“If somebody said to us this is your journey for the next three years, we’d grab it.”
The material is there. Lisa is a twice under-22 European champion, a world silver medallist and world champion. Aoife has won the European title three times and is also a world silver medallist and world champion.
Come LA 2028, Aoife will be 31 and Lisa 26. Team mate Kellie Harrington successfully defended the lightweight gold medal she won in Tokyo in Paris 2024 at 34, while Katie Taylor was 39 for the defence of her professional world titles against Amanda Serrano in July.
Age has become what people make it to be.
“Kellie deserves everything she got, and she worked for it,” she says. “I truly believe you will not get anything without the hard work.
“Seeing how Kellie can achieve that, there’s no doubt myself and others on the boxing team can’t achieve the same.”
Now. Ticket to Hamburg, check.
