Championing the cause of forlorn Ireland By Claire O’Sullivan

IT WAS as if she had walked into the arms of God. Head raised skywards, eyes closed, and arms stretched open, the Irish girl savoured every nanosecond of the moment.

She didn’t look at anyone or anything. She just breathed in the win: letting the golden moment dance upon her face like the warmth of Mediterranean sunshine, letting the exhilaration cascade through her.

Every cell and muscle of her exhausted body was drowning in the impossible joy of a win she had visualised for years, in a fight she had been told she could not have. But she had been so determined.

After battling, along with her father, for years to ensure that women’s boxing would make it to the Olympics, she had ‘done’ it and she had won it. Katie Taylor could not be further from the money-driven, ego-fuelled, profile-obsessed personalities we expect of the greatest superstars.

Not only is Taylor one of the greatest of sports people, she is an ambassador for a country sneered at, derided and lampooned in international media in recent years. Her humility, self-belief and honesty are things this country, and others, and sport itself, can learn from.

Taylor is also an ambassador and trailblazer for women in sport. Those in the upper echelons of British sport and society, such as Steve Redgrave, Kelly Holmes and Kate Middleton, made their way to the ExCel Stadium to see Taylor in combat. Lennox Lewis and Oscar De La Hoya were euphoric in their praise of her.

The voices questioning the ‘propriety’ of women’s boxing were silent yesterday as they watched a woman soar in the ultimate sporting ring.

There is another thing for which we will all be grateful. Taylor was a loudspeaker through which a powerful message about Ireland was amplified this week, a real-life image more engaging than any St Patrick’s Day schmaltz. The national pride that she engendered in the Irish, and our joy in her win, have become defining moments of the Olympics. Media across the world were once again left stunned by the energy, pride and loyalty of the Irish: a sense of nationality and pride that is never about violence or supremacy, but about pure, unbridled joy.

The excesses of the Celtic Tiger years will haunt us and our pockets for years to come. The value system that festered around it was cringe-inducing as a nation couldn’t spend borrowed money fast enough. But the Irish woman at the centre of the Olympic stage is the apotheosis of such crassness. She harks back to more grounded values: life is about sport, faith and family.

In a world where spoiled Premier League footballers earn salaries equal to the GDP of a small African nation, and boast about having a different sports cars for each day of the week, Taylor’s utter disregard for money is legendary.

In an interview with Hot Press magazine two years ago, she was asked whether or not it was difficult carrying the Olympic hopes of a beleaguered nation.

“I hope I can help to cheer people up. It’s going to be a hard time for everyone in the next few years; but money doesn’t make you happy at the end of the day,” she said. “As long you have enough to put food on the table for your family, that’s all that matters.”

Embodying the spirit of the Olympics, she has also made it clear that, for her, sport isn’t about money. Two years ago, the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) presented competitors with skirts, rather than the usual shorts, saying they wanted to “phase [them] in for international competitions”. They also wanted them to wear tight-fitting tops. It was a move that was all about making women’s boxing more marketing- and sponsorship-friendly.

Poland Boxing further endorsed the AIBA by making it compulsory for their boxers to wear skirts, saying they were more “elegant”. “By wearing skirts, in my opinion, it gives a good impression, a womanly impression,” Poland coach Leszek Piotrowski told BBC Sport. “Wearing shorts is not a good way for women boxers to dress.”

Taylor was horrified. There was no way she was going to dress like a cat-fighting cheerleader. She branded the move a disgrace. “I don’t even wear mini-skirts on a night out, so I definitely won’t be wearing mini-skirts in the ring,” she said. “We should be able to wear shorts, just like the men.”

“We’ve got morals that go above marketing,” her father, Pete, told the AIBA. And so the skirts idea was dropped.

There are a great many priests in Irish churches who will tomorrow make reference to Taylor’s faith — she has repeatedly demonstrated, and spoken, of the kind of inner purpose that it can engender. After she won yesterday, she raised her hands to the sky as if to give thanks to God. She has regularly said she has no need for a sports psychologist, she believes Jesus is willing her to make use of her talents. Here, again, she hasn’t been afraid to be different.

To be in your teens, 20s and 30s in Ireland, and be religious, is not easy. In the emotional outbursts, anger and utter disbelief that have trailed in the wake of the publication of the reports of Ryan and Murphy, religion is often more associated with denial than any kind of spiritual journey.

For a whole lot of young Christians, Taylor’s regular references to her faith may make their path more understandable to others.

“The Bible is my main thing. I get a lot of strength and confidence from it, and from going to church every Sunday. The worship songs are just so encouraging and uplifting. I think boxing is what I was born to do.

“Everyone has gifts and talents, and that’s what God wants you to do. I think it puts a big smile on God’s face when you’re doing what you were born to do. Prayer is a big thing for us, we’re constantly praying. I think Christianity is about having a personal relationship with God more than anything else,” she said in an interview earlier this year.

Much of the Olympics is about dreaming the dream. For Taylor, though, much more was needed than just a bunch of dreams and the will to win. But Taylor’s pioneering campaign to get women into an Olympic boxing ring was never about feminism per se. It was about equality.

“It is every athlete’s dream to represent their country at the Olympics and I’m no different, and all we want is the same opportunity as other athletes ... Men are allowed to box, so women should be allowed to, as well,” she said.

During his commentary for Radio na Gaeltachta yesterday, Sean Bán Breathnach likened Taylor to Maud Gonne, Mary Robinson and Máire Mac an tSaoi. Near to tears, the veteran presenter described Thursday as “an occasion that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life”.

Here was a girl who had carried the weight of the country’s expectations on her shoulders and singlehandely showcased women’s boxing for five years, reaching the ultimate heights. The Katie Taylor story is about never giving in to begrudgers; it’s about unrelenting self-belief, and fighting for the right to be recognised. It’s about the importance of family and friends. It is stories like this that lift a nation that, like an abused child, is relentlessly told that it will never amount to anything.