Nothing compares to Katie classic

IT was history in the making — an historic day for boxing and for the whole Olympic movement as the first three gold medals in women’s boxing were decided. And a dream realised for Ireland’s Katie Taylor, the driving force to have the discipline added to the Olympic programme.

The idea of women’s boxing included on what was an already crowded Olympic programme appeared far fetched until five years ago. That was when the president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, sat side by side with the president of the OCI, Pat Hickey, at the world championships in Chicago to watch two women’s exhibition bouts.

Katie Taylor produced one of her spectacular performances to show them women’s boxing was on a par with anything they had watched that day during the finals of the men’s world championships.

It was always going to meet with resistance. Federations were concerned about dropping some of the men’s divisions to make way for the women. Eventually, playing the gender balance card, the IOC was able to persuade AIBA that women’s boxing had a place in the Olympics.

The adjustments were made and yesterday boxing and the Olympics reaped rich rewards at the end of what was of the most exciting week’s boxing in the history of the Olympic Games.

In my 36 years covering Olympic Games, this week has been the most enthralling, thanks to Katie Taylor and the Irish fans who travelled in such numbers. Each of them deserved a medal for the support and the way they conducted themselves in the ExCel where they cheered all the performances, were generous in support of the British boxers and generated an atmosphere never before experienced — not in my time anyway — in the boxing arena.

It has been a journey longer and harder than most.

Katie had to watch Olympic Games from her home in Bray knowing that the sport she was devoted to was the only one missing from the women’s programme at the Summer Games.

She had to blaze a trail, both at home and abroad, to prove women had a place in the Olympic ring, ignore the raised eyebrows and just clock up world title after world title. She had four of them by the time she reached London.

Yet Taylor, who at 26 may very well walk away from the sport she loves while at her peak, shares the one key trait of all great Olympians, a burning desire to be the best.

“I want to go all the way to the very top,” an 11-year-old Taylor told RTÉ in a radio interview plucked from the archives this week, bragging that she had hit a boy in the nose and made him fall over.

Her mother Bridget, who was a boxing judge before Katie was born, said in a recent interview that her daughter did not have a 21st birthday party, nor does she drink alcohol. She has been on a few dates but “she just can’t give it the time”.

While it will utterly change as soon as she steps off the plane in Dublin airport with a gold medal around her neck, Taylor has enjoyed a relatively low profile in Ireland that has suited her quiet, diligent and fuss-free style.

Constant through it all has been another devotion, to Christianity. Deeply religious, Taylor prays with her mother in her hotel room before every fight, listens to the same worship songs on her iPod and reads the same bible verses.

She credits everything to God, has said religion is the most important thing in her life and that she would not be world champion without it.

Thanks to Taylor’s performances and the grandness of the occasion for women’s sport, her celebrity has and will spread far and wide with intrigued US sportswriters, in particular, leaving no media seat unfilled at the ExCel centre yesterday.

Such intrigue in the land where big boxing dollars are made will likely present Taylor with tempting professional offers from promoters who know just how big a draw she’d be in places like New York or Boston.

But for now, she can savour being an Olympic champion. And for Irish boxing it was only the second gold medal — so far — following on from Michael Carruth’s gold in Barcelona in 1992.

Yesterday Claressa Shields from the United States won the gold medal at middleweight and flyweight Nicola Adams turned over the results of two previous world championship finals to defeat Cancan Ren from China.

But it was all about Taylor with the stars stepping up for a slice of the cake. Barry McGuigan cheered her on, Amir Khan sang her praises every day and Lennox Lewis was stunned by the ferocity she showed in the Natasha Jonas fight.

Boxing has certainly done its bit to lift Irish spirits in my time on the beat, though it isn’t alone. John Treacy endeared himself to the nation with his back to back wins in the world cross-country championships in 1978 and 1979 so his silver medal in the Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984 was celebrated in style.

It wasn’t long before Ireland had other heroes to follow — Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche. Barry McGuigan gave Ireland reasons to be cheerful, Marcus O’Sullivan and Frank O’Mara too.

Carruth and McCullough kept boxing in the news again but while Steve Collins prospered in the pro ranks, the amateur game was in danger of sinking — just one boxer qualified for Sydney and Athens Olympics — until Gary Keegan, Billy Walsh and the IABA set up the ISC funded High Performance Unit at North Circular Road.

The results were spectacular: in Beijing Kenneth Egan won silver and Paddy Barnes and the late Darren Sutherland won bronze. Memories to savour. However Katie’s gold medal performances throughout this week have surpassed everything to date. Now women’s boxing is firmly established at world and Olympic level.

In 1956 in Melbourne, Irish boxers also won a record haul of four medals — silver for Fred Teidt and bronze for Johnny Cauldwell, Freddie Gilroy and Tony Byrne — and this team has now equalled that with Katie Taylor winning gold and John Joe Nevin, Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlan boxing for silver today.

Can it get even better?

Did you Know

Katie Taylor’s victory means Ireland have rocketed up the (non-US-style) medals table from joint 66th to joint 38th, alongside Lithuania. Forty two countries have now won a gold at these Games — still well short of the Beijing total of 54 nations.