'No limits' for teacher come kickboxing world champ Amy Wall
AGRESSION KEY: Kickboxer Amy Wall poses for a portrait during the European Games team day for Team Ireland. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
It’s hard to argue with the accusation that the Olympics has gotten too big for its boots. Next year’s Paris Games will sprawl over 17 days.
It will feature 10,500 athletes competing across 32 sports, 329 individual events and 35 venues, the furthest of them 15,000km away from the French capital in Tahiti.
For some, though, the Olympics just aren’t big enough.
Amy Broadhurst has won Commonwealth, European and World gold medals at boxing’s 63kg class but is competing this year at the 66 division.
Why? Because a certain Olympic champion called Kellie Harrington is already ensconced at the lighter weight and countries can’t have two fighters in the same ring next year.
Jenny Egan has medalled in six major championships and stood on the podium over a dozen times after World Cup races. Problem is that the vast majority have come in canoe sprint distances that aren’t included on a Games schedule which, in 2024, will include surfing, breaking, sport climbing and skateboarding for the first time.
Among those looking for a similar invite in the years to come is kickboxing which takes another big step along that path this week when it makes its debut at the European Games (run by the IOC) in Krakow.
Ireland will be stacked for it.
A nine-strong squad will compete in ten events and, while it seems unfair to single out a handful given the strength in depth, there is merit in choosing three to showcase the calibre of athlete that steps up at the Myslenice Arena as it starts today.
Jodie Browne, who balances her sport with studies in media and criminology in Maynooth, is currently the WAKO Senior World and European champion in the pointfighting 70kg class and among the favourites in Krakow.
Conor McGlinchey, a pointfighter in the 84kg division, is a WAKO European silver medallist and two-time WAKO Junior World champion who is studying law in UCC where he was recently named the university’s sportsperson of the year.
Amy Wall is another to watch, in the full contact 60kg bracket. A primary schoolteacher in Dalkey, and originally from Bray, she already has three WAKO world titles plus WAKO European silver and bronze medals to her name.
Wall was one of those kids who sat glued to the sofa watching the Olympics. Training in Bray Boxing Club alongside Katie Taylor acted as another bellows to her ambitions and she doesn’t shy away from what it would mean to emulate her most famous neighbour.
“It would be the biggest and best thing that could ever happen to kickboxing. Hopefully it does but for the moment we just have to keep going, keep training. If it’s meant to happen while I’m competing then it’s meant to be. It’s something I would love to do.”
If that’s the end point then her journey started with ballet classes at the age of four. She hated them. Karate was more her kind of thing but she looked longingly at the kickboxing classes that followed her own and wanted desperately to sign up.
Karate was fun but it was all patterns and shapes. Kickboxing was more full on. She liked that but had to wait until she was ten before the club would admit her and it wasn’t exactly all gravy from there to here. It took time to find her feet and walk tall.
Pointfighting and light contact were her entry gates but there were few wins in the early years. The turning point came when she graduated to full contact and finally found a way to overcome an opponent who had become her nemesis.
“If I want something I am going to keep working, in kickboxing and in school as well. There was this girl who used to beat me really badly for a couple of years and I said I would get there. It took me maybe four years but I beat her.
“Once I beat her it was the biggest achievement ever for me. I have that determined ‘push push push’ mindset and I know if I keep working consistently at something you will get there but you have to give it time. It won’t just come.”
It’s a lesson she has taught her fourth class pupils who had just presumed she was winning medals since day one. An understandable assumption given the apparent ease with which the Wicklow woman has adapted to the senior ranks.
Two world junior titles followed on from that breakthrough win, which itself had come on the way to an Irish crown, and that rate of progression accelerated when taking the senior world title at the age of just 21 just over 18 months ago.
Wall’s aggressiveness is her calling card. A liability at times in light contact and pointfighting, it is rewarded in her current class. Power is another strength while a willingness to strike so much with her legs makes her an unorthodox opponent.
And a driven one.
“I want to keep going,” she said. “There’s no limits for me.”
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