Normality has new meaning now

Four crazy, blurred months have spun by since Katie Taylor claimed gold at the ExCel Arena in London and Peter Taylor, her father and coach, expressed the hope that his daughter would walk away from the ring for the last time.

Like Alexander, the woman from Bray could have scanned the horizon last September and mourned that there were no more worlds to conquer, no glass ceilings to shatter, but the 60kg conqueror has simply decided to scale all those peaks again.

She has been back to work, ticking over in the gym, for three months now already, emerging more often than she would care for to grace some awards do or honour another sponsor’s agreement with her quiet aura and winning smile but the focus remains the same as it always was.