Boxingclub with no toilet that raised a champion

PETE Taylor set up St Fergal’s in his adopted home town of Bray at the age of 35. The first three members were his children – Peter, Lee and Katie. At the time there were no officially sanctioned competitions for women’s boxers in Ireland.

Two years later in 1997, the Irish Amateur – now athletic – Boxing Association voted to allow women to compete in the sport but another four years elapsed before the first-ever sanctioned contest for women took place on Halloween night in the National Stadium in 2001.

Within four years Katie had won the first of her six European titles. Later that year the Taylor family made a couple of life-changing decisions.

Pete Taylor sold his electrical business in order to devote himself full time to coaching Katie, who dropped out of UCD to become a fulltime boxer.

The old boat shed near Bray harbour became the epicentre of the project. It was a picturesque setting, but facilities in the newly named Bray Boxing club were basic.

It wasn’t until Taylor won her fourth world title in 2012 that a toilet was installed. Up until then everybody had to run down the road and use the bathroom facilities in the nearby Harbour Bar.

A visit by the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the Bray club in the run-up to the London Olympics was the catalyst for a much-needed upgrade of their facilities.

In 2014, Katie Taylor opened the new state-ofthe-art training facility. The project was funded by a €190,000 grant from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and €100,000 from Bray Town Council.