Turning Sweet Science fiction into hard facts

THE dream factory off the South Circular Road, down the lane that runs alongside to the National Stadium, is not what you’d expect.

Your image of a top-class boxing gym maybe owes a little bit to the Rocky movies. Or, going back a bit further, a little bit to the odd Budd Schulberg novel. Or going back even further, maybe something to institutions like the famous Stillman’s Gym in New York, where the old-timer Johnny Dundee complained eloquently when it was put to those present that the windows — opaque, odorous — be opened (“Fresh air? That stuff is likely to kill us!”).

An atmosphere you can reach out and touch, or at least inhale; a supporting cast of figures with a tangential relationship to the law; someone, somewhere, chewing the dead end of a cigar. Those lazy assumptions are not true of the training area for the Irish High Performance boxing team.