Katie Taylor: Dad won't be in my corner for Rio Olympics qualifier

Katie Taylor will not have her father Pete in her corner for the Olympic qualifiers in Turkey in six weeks’ time.

Pete Taylor stepped away temporarily from his role as coach to the multiple champion late last year after a decade overseeing his daughter’s career, though he may yet resume his position in time for the Games which start in August.

“My Dad is obviously just taking a bit of a break,” said Taylor. “He decided to take that break so when he’s ready to come back I’m delighted to welcome him back. For the time being, I have a great support system around, a great infrastructure, and Zaur is absolutely brilliant.”

Zaur is, of course, the renowned Zaur Antia who has been hailed as the best technical boxing coach in the world, and the Georgian has been able to continue overseeing Taylor’s training despite adding to his role as interim head coach of the IABA’s High-Performance Unit.

“Zaur has gone above and beyond everything. The training with him is still pretty much the same. Obviously we were very sad to see Billy go, but Zaur is absolutely outstanding. The media have made such a big deal out of the Billy Walsh saga,” said Taylor.

“We’re obviously sad to see him go, but we should be probably speaking about the greatness of Zaur Antia than about Billy Walsh going over to America. Zaur Antia is absolutely... he’s the best coach in the world. The boxers are flying under him.”

Antia was in Taylor’s corner as she defeated Serbia’s Jelina Jelic in Kanturk last Friday and America’s Queen Underwood in Tralee the following evening. The plan now is to schedule one more fight between this and Turkey.

Underwood had two professional boxers in her corner as she fell to a unanimous points decision to the Bray woman and Taylor spoke again, at the announcement of new mentors for the Sky Sports’ Living for Sport campaign, about whether she will turn to the pro ranks before she retires.

When that is remains to be seen and she accepted that it may take someone with her profile to leave the amateur ranks before the women’s professional game can stand on its own two feet.

“Yeah, we need a few of the bigger names in the amateur game to turn over, to generate a bit more interest in the women’s professional game.

“At the moment, nobody really knows anything about women’s professional boxing. I don’t even know about it and I’m involved in the sport. We definitely need to get a few big names involved.”