Golden wonder Kellie Harrington: I’m an Olympic champion but it doesn’t define me as a person'

Kellie Harrington celebrates with her gold medal. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie

Kellie Harrington has insisted time and again that these Olympics would not change her.

Perspective has vied with performance as a key touchstone all through her time in the Japanese capital, a fact emphasised by how she has repeatedly mentioned her job and her colleagues on the wards of St Vincent’s Hospital where she works part-time as a cleaner.

“I’m an Olympic champion but it doesn’t define me as a person,” she insisted after beating Brazil’s Beatriz Ferreira to win gold. “I’ll be home… I’d say it will be a bit mental, but I will be going back to work, either in two weeks or three weeks.

“We’ll have to wait and see on that one and ask Karen and Linda first, when are they going to let me back in but I’ll be back to work and doing my normal thing and that keeps me grounded. My circle is very small and it will be staying very small.” Her’s is a mantra shared just over a week ago by Paul O’Donovan who, along with Fintan McCarthy, had secured Ireland’s other gold medal of these Games in rowing’s lightweight doubles at the Sea Forest Waterway.

There’s nothing contrived in any of this.

Harrington and O’Donovan and McCarthy are three extraordinary athletes who happen to be very ordinary people. There are no airs and graces to these Olympic champions and no sense that their achievements will prove too much for them to carry going forward.

Harrington will be bringing her medal on to the wards with her when she returns but you can tell that this will be for the staff and the patients and not for herself. She describes herself as a giver and her coaches go along with that.

“I just want to keep doing what I’m doing,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s nothing going to change from here out. I’m not going to be changing from here out. I’m not going to be thinking something I’m not.

“I’ll just continue to be this way apart from having me gold medal and that’s it. I’m not going to change. Everything stays the same, my feet stay on the ground. I’ll go back to work, have a bit of a break, go home, eat loads of Base Pizza.” Emotions were never far from the surface. There were tears, like when she spotted coach John Conlan in the mixed zone and the dam burst, but they were intermingled with periods where she spoke candidly and, sometimes, comically.

She spoke of the sacrifice and hard work and dedication that has gone into all this. Not hers. That of her family and her coaches. Noel Burke, her club coach back home, has been name-checked after every fight here. At a remove in Dublin but very much a part of it.

The overriding emotion? Relief.

There’s a battle of the mind that conflicts every athlete on these high-wire acts. You train and sweat and sacrifice for the ultimate goal but so many do it without ever voicing what that goal is. It’s never given shape or status beyond the back reaches of the mind.

Processes. Steps. All hateful words to the media but rope and harness to those aiming for the top.

“Obviously I do love that I have this medal but it is step by step to get there. Performance is key. If you don’t perform well then you can’t move on to the next stage so there’s no point in setting goals. I don’t go out going, ‘I want a gold medal, I want a gold medal’ because if the shit hits the fan then you don’t get anything.” 

That it didn’t was down to a combination of influences: the coaches, their plan, her own talent and ability to absorb information and put it to practise when a fighter of Beatriz Ferreira’s class and aggression was coming at her and for her.

Even the confirmation that she was 3-2 down on the judges’ scoring cards after the first didn’t rattle her.

“No, there’s no point in being concerned because if you get concerned you go out and start making mistakes and rushing things and getting caught.

“My opponent was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Great counter-puncher, very, very strong and you’ve got to keep calm and composed and fight your fight, not someone else’s. That’s the key to performance. Perform well and the rest will look after itself.”