Katie’s sights firmly fixed on London 2012
Between gulps of warm tea, those sitting recently outside the Esplanade Hotel or on the strand in Bray, feet stretched in front of them towards the sunshine, may have noticed a busy, little shape buzzing up Bray Head. Up, up, up towards the large concrete cross; a one-woman Good Friday procession.
And when the sun didn’t shine, and the rain rolled out a welcome mat on the steep incline while no-one was there to notice the town’s most famous daughter? She ran up it anyway.
Last week’s quiet pilgrimage to the brow of the well-known hill was Katie Taylor’s last before the World Championships in Barbados. No harm. The torturous and boring routine is the least favourite element of her training schedule, though as the devout Christian knows and must sometimes reflects in the shadow of the cross: you reap what you sow.
Now, as Hugh McIlvanney wrote of Muhammad Ali: “The hours are peeling away and soon he will have to grasp the bare wire of what that Wednesday morning will mean to him.’’
It’s almost show-time again.
In the afternoons the 24-year-old sits back in the passenger seat of her father’s car. Peter — a Liverpool-born man who is also Katie’s coach — points the motor towards the National Stadium on Dublin’s South Circular Road, though it could surely find itself there automatically at this stage.
The high performance gym is hunkered down next to the stadium itself. Four blue boxing rings run side-by-side towards a well-used weights room at the rear.
The block walls are brightly painted and tagged with inspirational words from those who’ve ducked and weaved under these lights before. “Don’t follow your dreams — chase them”. Roll of honour: Egan, Carruth, Sutherland, McCullough et al.
Taylor looks at home in their company. I poke my head around the door at Wednesday lunchtime.
Taylor, her father and female light-welterweight Allana Murphy of the East Side club are sitting on the nape of the nearest ring, chatting. Murphy is relaxed and jokes naturally with Taylor; don’t mind her, she’s a slagger, Katie tells me. But later that day, game-face on, Murphy books her ticket on the plane next to her friend for the world championships when she wins her box-off in the ring next door.
Taylor, our brightest Olympic hope, is expected to take her third world title on the trot in the Caribbean. We sit on a weights bench in the back of the hall before her second session of the day, where the only sounds in the hall will be instructions from her dad, the thud, thud, thud of the heavy punch bags and the whirl of her feet constantly dancing around the familiar ring. This is the fun part.
“We usually never train with the radio here. I don’t know why that is. In my own club we have the radio on,” says Taylor — a Nutini fan, “But it could be anything — I could be sparring to politics or something.
“I listen to all the same songs before my own fights though — my Christian songs mostly I suppose — and I read the same verses of the Bible and just to get into the zone that way. It’s all part of having a routine.
“I won’t get to see much of Barbados itself really — it’ll just be training and hotel rooms and boxing — same as usual really but at least it’s not flying into Ukraine or Russia for a change I suppose. That’s what we usually get.”
She speaks from experience. Two successful trips to world championships before have taught her about preparation; like what to pack in the suitcase next to the bandages and spare training gear.
“We’ll bring some of our own food. The usual stuff — Nutrigrains and little small things like cereals or pastas or whatever to keep you going.
“The weight thing is always a struggle for me, like most boxers. I’ll have to make 60 kilograms in three weeks and at the moment I’m in and around 62, 63 so there needs to be a little bit done. But no matter what, it’s always about the last kilo, that’s the real killer.
“The night before will sometimes be about sweating it out, you’re just trying to dehydrate yourself, it’s horrible,” she shrugs.
Taylor has also been an international-class attacker with Ireland’s ladies teams in the past. There’s no time to fill a green jersey at the moment.
“I played a few club matches this year for Peamount (a Dublin club) but I can’t fit in the international games at all. It’s getting harder and harder to do both. It’s all about the balance now.”
So after another one of the six day in which she wraps her hands to work is done — in two gyms and in two counties — she’ll crash out in the family home in Wicklow for the evening.
One day closer to Barbados. And then perhaps another title closer to London in 2012. She’s certainly working towards it.
