A turning point in how we see ourselves?

Someone needs to have a word with this Katie Taylor, and fast.

To become famous in Ireland without squirrelling millions away in the Ukraine, or trousering vast fees from mysterious Russian companies? To succeed without splashing your private life in the public’s face for profit? To advance to the head of your field without the benefit of patronage, nepotism or corruption? To be admired and respected across the land not for succeeding with snake-oil and spoofery but for actual achievement?

Maybe The Daily Telegraph had a point after all. There’s something positively un-Irish about her the more you look at her.

In the future, when pop historians sift through the evidence from these unha-ppy times to pinpoint the day reality returned to this country after years of fantasy, maybe yesterday will be their before-and-after date.

Because it was the day, after a lengthy period out of fashion, when the eternal verities reasserted themselves again. Hard work and commitment. Honesty and bravery. Dedication.

In short, the values you didn’t hear much about when the country lost itself.

You can make the obvious, logical objection to our admiration for Katie Taylor: That hoisting people on pedestals was part of the problem in the past 10 years. The problem then was that we were exhorted to admire an assortment of chancers and spivs, quite often by those self-same chancers and spivs.

As a result, Katie Taylor’s reserve and sense of privacy are admirable in and of themselves; when those are allied to genuine achievement then the package is near-irresistible. To capture the nation’s affection, respect and awe by stealth in the way she has is a towering achievement. Could it be a turning point in how we see ourselves?

It’d be nice to think so, certainly. Katie Taylor isn’t known for the nightclubs she frequents. Nobody can tell you how her house is furnished, or what her views are on the latest crisis in light entertainment.

She’s one of our least-known role models, if you want to put it that way, and all the better for that element of mystery. The late scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote eloquently and clearly about sport, and once remarked that it was wrong to look for role models among sportspeople: You look to them for expertise and proficiency in their sport, and no more.

This is true, but it misses a fundamental truth about sporting excellence. If it’s genuinely unadorned with pretensions to a wider significance, if it’s truly a matter of dedication to excellence, then that commitment — single-minded, focused — becomes itself worthy of emulation.

If you need someone to pontificate on the minutiae of the day’s events, you can always find a mouthpiece. But if you need someone to show that dedication isn’t an everyday thing, that it’s an every day thing, who better than Katie Taylor?

The narrative yesterday burnished that achievement. Rather than a pro forma ascent to the podium, Katie was asked searching questions on her way to gold, but found the answers.

As a consequence, her rival, Sofya Ochigava, finds herself in the company of Juan Hernandez and Daniel Timofte, others faced down by Irish sporting heroes at their moment of glory.

Katie wakes up today to the rest of her life: The existence where people point her out in the street, where strangers will address her by her first name, where those who sit next to her on airplanes will tell her where they were on Aug 9, 2012.

In some ways it’s an odd way to thank her for what she has done, a life sentence of being bothered by strangers in return for the day she did the State some service. Cheering us up. Encouraging the nation. Showing us old-fashioned virtues are as modern as they come.

Read more:

‘She’s the world’s favourite Olympian. She’s bigger than Bolt’

No longer an ordinary girl just doing her job, she is a heroine and a queen for life

Green wall of noise as fans cheer champion

‘Katie’s psalm’ is a plea to God to be her shield

‘The Irish people admire her and love her to bits’

‘I just knew it was Katie’s destiny to be Olympic champion’

Katie lifts gold – and hearts of a nation