“I’ve had a year of living somewhat normal,” says Kellie Harrington, stirring her coffee on the North Strand. “And normal is not for me. It’s just not for me, for now.”
In a nutshell, that’s all there is to it. When it comes right down to it, Ireland’s two-time Olympic gold medallist isn’t done being a boxer. She said she was. She maybe even thought she was. Paris was definitely supposed to be the end. Now, it turns out, it wasn’t.
“Every fight I have, I put so much pressure on myself. I can’t wait to fight – and then, come three, four weeks before the fight, I’m wondering why I do it. ‘Why am I still here? What the hell am I at?’
“And I suppose then after the Olympics, I just announced my retirement. But that’s the good thing about life, we’re allowed to make our minds up, we’re allowed to change them again and make it back up and change it again.
RM Block
“I’ll be 36 in December. So, why not? I’m saying nothing about the [next] Olympics or anything like that. Everybody knows me. I’ll never say anything about winning or going to the Olympics. I always look at one fight at a time, one competition at a time. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
“But I do just think, imagine if I didn’t give it another go. I’m fit, I’m kind of healthy. I have a few niggles at the moment but in general I’m healthy. So why wouldn’t I?”
Harrington is going to fight in the Nationals in January. She has a couple of kilos to shed before then to get down to her 60kg fighting weight so there’ll be a purge of sugar products from the house over the coming weeks and months. Her first time back in the ring will be on December 2nd, with a night of exhibition boxing in the Round Room in the Mansion House, a special place for her ever since she was awarded the Freedom of the City there in 2022. Baby steps.
“I have people saying, ‘Oh, but your legacy.’ And I’m like, ‘Legacy is what you make it.’ I have two Olympic gold medals. I’m the only female in Ireland to have gold medals from two different Olympics. And the only Irish Olympian with two gold medals in boxing. So no matter what, I’ve already won, you know?
“And I think there’s a lesson in it for me. If I step into the ring and I lose a fight, it’s fine because nobody has died. I’ll get out and I’ll still hopefully be healthy and it’s only a loss. The reason why I’m stepping back in is because I enjoy it. I enjoy moving, I enjoy sparring, I enjoy learning something new every day about boxing. And I don’t necessarily enjoy learning something new every day outside of boxing. Boxing is where I enjoy it. So why wouldn’t I do it?”
There was no big reveal. No moment of clarity that turned the retirement ship around. She came home from Paris with a second gold medal around her neck and within three or four weeks of everything dying down, she found herself back out at the Sport Ireland Institute in Abbotstown. Not doing a lot, really. But not doing nothing either.
And that’s how it has been for much of the past 14 months. She does a lot of her training with her club coach Noel Burke anyway and so she has tipped away in St Mary’s in Tallaght. She’s been in and around the High Performance Unit on and off, sparring with Zara Breslin, the young Waterford fighter who won the Irish 60kg title in her absence and fought in last month’s World Championships in Liverpool. Retirement was something she said, more so than something she did.
“I’ve had more than a year and I’ve had time to reflect on why I actually started boxing in the first place,” says Harrington. “It was to get me out of the hole, the wrong road that I was going down. And I’ve had time to reminisce on how I felt when I started boxing first and how I want that feeling again.
“I know that sounds mad because I’ll be 36 in December. But it’s being a part of something. And I don’t want to be a part of anything else. Everybody says, ‘Oh, but you could do this and that. You could go to Timbuktu.’ And I’m like, ‘Timbuktu is too far away for me.’ I’m here and this is what I want to do. This is what has saved me. And thanks be to god, I don’t need saving any more. But I enjoy it. And I still feel like I have more to give back.”
Still, it’s one thing keeping your hand in. It’s another to decide that you’re stepping out of the twilight and actually suiting up again. If she was going to do it for real, there had to come a reckoning. Which meant she had to sit down with her wife, Mandy Loughlin.
“I think Mandy always knew as well that I was going to go back. But there had to be a point where I had to officially say, ‘Right, it’s happening.’ And when I told Mandy, she says, ‘Look, I’m obviously not happy. I don’t want you to go back.’ And I was like, I was just speechless looking at her. Then I was like, ‘Why?’ She says, ‘Because you’re not the easiest person to live with when you’re in it.’”
It’s not that she was worried for your safety?
“No, no, no, nothing like that. It’s just like, ‘Yeah, you’re not the easiest person to live with when you’re in preparation mode and you’re fully focused.’ And she’s right! I’m not. There’s no doubt about that.
“So we kind of talked and I was like, ‘This is different. This is not…’ Well, it’s different until it’s not different, I suppose! But I’m doing it because I want to do it. I’m just happy. When I start getting ratty, then we’ll reassess the situation.
“But she also said she’d support me and everything. And if Mandy didn’t support me, then I wouldn’t be doing it. Because you can’t. I couldn’t do this without Mandy. It’s impossible. If you don’t have somebody there – your partner, your wife, your husband, whoever – backing you the whole way, then who else is going to back you?”
This isn’t about the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028. Not yet, anyway. For now, it’s about the Mansion House in December and the National Stadium in January. But equally, it would be silly to pretend that LA isn’t in the conversation. If Harrington wins her 12th national title early in 2026, she’ll start thinking about next steps. And next, and next, and next. It doesn’t take much prompting for her to start laying it out.
“It’s all small steps,” she says. “And small steps before the biggest step of them all. The biggest step is the qualifiers in 2027, in Istanbul in Turkey, probably in July. Not thinking too far ahead or anything! But that’s only a blink of an eye away really. And look, it could be all over by January anyway.
“I’ll never look past the Nationals because anything can happen. And we have got some great girls coming through. Even talking about Istanbul, they’re longer goals. I know it’s only, you blink your eyes and you’re there. But I’ll go to Nationals, play it by ear, see what happens. And if it happens that I’m out, then I’m out.”
She went to the World Championships last month. And not as an idle bystander and not as a supporter. She brought her kit bag and her gloves and found herself a sparring partner and they had a good old dance together. She’s not in bad shape but she’s not in boxing shape either. So when she faced off against the Indian entrant in the 60kg weight class, she soon knew all about it.
“I hadn’t had a proper competitive spar since Paris. And we had three belter rounds, proper sparring now. It was class. It was great. But I was sick for the day after it. I went over on a 4am flight, had a bit of breakfast and then sparred the three rounds. She was there competing so she was in serious shape. It was a mad thing to do. But I really enjoyed it.”
This is the nub of it. Kellie Harrington loves boxing. She loves the insanity of it. It scares her and it thrills her. She will live a long life without it – you can’t box in the amateurs once you turn 40 – so that simplifies everything for her. Now is all she has.
“It’s living,” she says, simply. “It might be living in complete chaos, but maybe that’s what gets me up in the morning. I’m very dramatic with absolutely everything I do. I’m the most emotional person you’ll probably ever meet. If I’m driving and I see a person walking a dog and the dog is old, I’ll start crying. Like, I am so emotional.
“What I miss the most about boxing is the emotional side of it. You’re warming up for a final, you’re probably the last person in the competition from the team. All the coaches are there. And the shit that’s going through your mind, knowing that they’re feeling the same thing that you’re feeling. But you’re also thinking, ‘They’re not the ones getting punched in the face!’
“It’s me that’s going to do this. They can only carry me so much. And then it’s me on my own. And you’re shitting yourself but then you’re parking it and you’re as brave as anything. Then you’re shitting yourself again, then you’re parking it again. And you’re walking around going, ‘I’m here, I’m going to get in, I’m going to give it what I have.’
“It’s the madness of those moments before a fight that I miss. Looking at all the coaches, the physio, the doctor, anyone from your team who’s there and you don’t have to say a word to them. You just look at them and you laugh because you’re like, ‘How crazy is this? Who would do this?’
“Nobody. Nobody would. You have to be mentally strong. I’m mentally very strong in that way, in that scenario. But outside of that, I’m not that mentally strong, probably. I’m very emotional. But in there, in that moment, I think that’s what maybe separates me from the rest.”
So on she goes. She doesn’t know where it will lead or where it will bring her or where it will end. But she’s in it now, full-bore. Suggest to her that it’s a way of staving off real life for another while yet and she bristles ever so slightly.
“I know what you’re saying, right. I know what you’re saying about real life and stuff. But what is real life? This is my life. I’m very happy with this being my life and I’m very comfortable with it.
“And like people say, what do you want to be when you grow up? I’m like, I am grown up. This is me. I enjoy doing what I do and at most I can do it till I’m 40. If everything goes to the plan that I have in my head, then at 39, I’ll be like, I can’t do it any more than that.
“So I don’t want to be sitting at home saying ‘I coulda, woulda, shoulda’. And if I am sitting at home and I’m watching it on the telly, I want to be saying, ‘I tried.’ And I didn’t fail. I just tried. There is no fail because you can’t fail.”
