Kellie Harrington on her 'incredible journey': I’m still here. I’m glad I made it to today

Ireland’s Kellie Harrington (red) won gold in Tokyo in the early hours of the morning. Picture: INPHO/Bryan Keane

Kellie Harrington has revealed that she never thought she would last long enough in Japan to make it as far as the ring.

The newly-minted women’s lightweight gold medallist claimed her title with a superb performance against Brazil’s Beatriz Ferreira in the early hours of Sunday morning Irish time but her campaign could have been over before it began.

“It’s been an incredible journey to get here,” she said. “I’ve been away from home for six weeks and I didn’t think I’d make it past three. I said to one of the coaches, ‘if I get homesick after three weeks can I go home?’ They said I wouldn’t and I’m still here. I’m glad I made it to today.” It’s a revealing insight into the pressures some athletes feel but rarely voice. The Irish boxing team arrived in Japan on the last day of June for a pre-Games camp and Harrington was the last of the boxers in action after receiving a first round bye as the number one seed.

“I didn’t suffer from homesickness. You know when you’re a kid and you go and stay over at your friend’s house, and you’re there for about four hours and your parents get a phone call to say ‘will you come and get Kellie because she’s crying?’ Coming out here, that was the way I thought I was going to be.

“I’ve never been away longer than two and a half weeks and coming to the end of the two weeks, whenever I’ve been away I start to feel homesick. So I said it to the coaches, ‘listen, if I get homesick after three weeks, I’m afraid of how I’m going to perform, my performance might go out the window’ and would it be ok to go home if it happened.

“They were like, ‘you’ll be alright Kellie, just take it step by step, day by day’. And there were a few of us on the team felt like that, it wasn’t just me. I suppose it’s the team we have around us, my teammates have just been amazing. They’ve been incredible, they’re a credit to themselves, being out of the competition but still being there for their other teammates.

“Sometimes people might be out of a competition and go off and do their own thing. But my teammates stuck around and showed their support and lifted me at times when I needed to be lifted. Because in this sport whether you’re winning or losing sometimes you have days where there are highs and lows and your teammates are there to pick you up and give you a little boost.” Harrington has struck the right chord at every step of her journey here, both inside the ropes and otherwise, and her bow after claiming the win yesterday was just another example of how she has recognised others when all the attention has come her way.

“I just think, you know, we’re Irish, we’re a country of people who just love to give. That’s just what we showed. I’m so thankful the Olympics was able to go ahead in the first place and I just wanted to thank the people of Japan for allowing this to happen.

“I’m grateful to those who couldn’t be here today, or any of the days. I just felt we wanted to say thank you and that’s what we did as a team. We bowed because I know bowing is a mark of respect in Japan.”