‘It’s our dream to be on same Irish team’ SIBLINGS DREAM OF CREATING ANOTHER PIECE OF HISTORY
Michaela and Aidan Walsh closing in on Olympic selection
‘Obviously I have always looked up to my sister’
THURSDAY evening in the Carlton Hotel, Blanchardstown and it’s a rare occasion when the Walsh siblings of North Belfast aren’t together. While Michaela was finishing off a meal and keeping an eye on the closing stages of Ireland’s Euro 2021 qualifier win over Greece, her younger brother Aidan was relaxing, up in his room. When the pair are required in Dublin by the IABA’s High Performance Unit, this is where they call home.
In London’s Copper Box Arena next weekend, the Walshes will continue their trend of making boxing history. Fresh from being the first brother and sister to win national elite titles, doing it on the same night back in November (following on from both winning Commonwealth silvers in 2018), they will be two of the Irish fighters trying to book a place in Tokyo in the European qualifying tournament.
‘Things have just fallen into place for us, it seems’ Michaela explains. ‘This was a dream that both of us have had since we were young, that we would be on the same Irish team and that we would go to the Olympic Games together. But it’s not something that we can dwell on too much, because you can’t become too emotionally involved in it. We both still have a job to do in London.’
This remarkable story begins in the West Belfast boxing club of St Agnes’s 14 years ago. That’s the club that their father, Damien, boxed out of as a decent amateur. When Aidan, the only son of three children, turned nine, Damien brought him down to the gym to see if he had much of an interest.
Michaela was three years older than her brother, but they hung out together. A lot. Played football in the street. Had the same circle of friends. ‘Michaela was always very sporty. She was a brilliant footballer when we were younger,’ Aidan remembers. ‘When she saw me going to the gym, it was only natural that she wanted to come along, too.’
Women’s boxing was still on the margins at the time. Katie Taylor has yet to enter the wider national consciousness. Olympic recognition seemed a world away. Even though Michaela pestered her father to let her come along, Damien wasn’t sure. He didn’t even know if they would have female changing rooms in the gym.
‘Myself and Aidan were very close, we would copy each other in everything. Would be playing football together and had the same friends. And if Aidan was going to box, I wanted to box, too,’ Michaela states. ‘But Daddy didn’t know anything about women’s boxing at the time, didn’t even know if women boxed.’
Damien asked Agnes’s head coach Sean Canavan if it was okay to bring his daughter along. ‘He was told, “of course,” Aidan recalls. ‘So, the next time I was brought down, Michaela came along, too. It took off from there.’
Michaela was sporty. ‘Tomboyish,’ she says. So, given that she had to endure the odd stare at the gym, she was determined to prove that she should be there.
‘From the first day in the gym, I was determined to work harder than anyone else in there,’ she recalls. ‘Maybe, it was to prove myself, that I should be there, training with the boys. But I was always pushing myself and Aidan was the same. That’s the way it has been with us.’
Michaela’s work ethic rubbed off on Aidan. ‘At the time, I just wanted to do what she was doing,’ he said. ‘If she was working in the gym, I wanted to be in the gym too, working just as hard as her.’
Michaela’s appetite for hard graft started to pay dividends as she began to accumulate national titles. She has won 13 in all now, including nine senior titles.
There are also the two Commonwealth silver medals, the European Games silver last year and a raft of international medals.
Aidan had some big footsteps to follow. ‘Well, I would have always looked up to Michaela. She’s a better boxer than myself anyway,’ he states baldly. ‘She was the one boxing internationally, winning national titles, so I was under a wee bit of pressure to follow in her footsteps.
‘But she was a great encouragement, always telling me that one day we would be boxing on the Irish team together. And it is great that has happened now. And people still say to me “Oh, you are Michaela Walsh’s brother.” It is a privilege to be known as that, because obviously I have always looked up to her.
‘My competitiveness comes from her. She was older so she was going to competitions before me, like the All-Irelands. I would see her go down to Dublin or head off with the Irish team, and I would think I want to do that.
‘When she won an All-Ireland, I just wanted to win an All-Ireland. She was always setting my goals, whether she knew it or not.’
The older Walsh sibling has had to endure her own fair share of heartache inside the ring. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, she was at the wrong end of a controversial decision to Nicola Adams in the flyweight final. And after narrowly missing out on qualification for Rio, their team sat around in the Monkstown club in Newtownabbey, outside Belfast and decided it was taking too much out of Michaela physically to cut down to 51 kgs.
Featherweight, or 57kgs, was her ideal weight and with a stroke of fortune, the International Olympic Council included featherweight in as one of the female divisions for Tokyo.
‘It was always a struggle to get down to 51kgs. It was taking so much out of me physically, had to watch everything I ate. Couldn’t go out and enjoy myself. 57kgs is my ideal weight.’
Monkstown boxing club is one of those sports clubs that is quietly trying to change young people’s lives – and give them a purpose. Based in an area that has been left disadvantaged and scarred by 30 years of conflict, the club has been commended at an official level for their education programmes that have been aimed at combatting crime and bringing communities together.
In Michaela and Aidan Walsh, they have two inspirational figures for all the young fighters, evident in Daryl Clarke winning an Ulster light-welterweight title last week. ‘Success breeds success,’ says Paul Johnston, their coach at
Monkstown. ‘The success
‘I can go a bit mad when Aidan fights’
of Team Walsh rubs off in the gym here. We have the next generation coming up who just want to emulate Michaela and Aidan, who made history as the first brother and sister to win elite titles on the same night, who made history by winning Commonwealth medals together.
‘The two of them push each other on. They are each other’s greatest supporter, and they can be each other’s greatest critic, too. There is a real rivalry there. They drive each other on, and the thing is that they take on board everything you tell them.’
Although they used to spar when they are younger, once Aidan matured into a welterweight, that had to stop. And Aidan has had to deal with his own setbacks, too.
In the national elite championships in February of last year, he lost a close decision to Paddy Donovan, the Limerick native who has seen gone pro under Andy Lee’s tutelage.
It made what happened in the national stadium in November all the more special.
He had watched Michaela clinch her ninth national title by stopping Emma Agnew in the second round, a couple of hours prior to his own final and then went out and captured the welterweight title with a comprehensive win over Riverstown’s Callum Walsh.
‘It was an incredible feeling that we were both crowned elite champion on the same night,’ Michaela remembers.
‘And it was good that my fight was on before Aidan’s, because if it came after, I wouldn’t have been able to focus on my own bout. People say that I can go a wee bit mad when Aidan is fighting.
‘To win national titles together, it is something that we had always dreamed about, from when we were younger. But it’s only the start.’
Their mother, Martine, took a bit of convincing when her two kids began boxing, especially her older daughter. However, as the medals and titles started to accumulate, she has come around. And it is a real family affair.
‘At the start, mammy wouldn’t have watched but since we became more and more successful, she has been a great support,’ Michaela says.
‘Both our parents have, they allowed us to go training in the gym twice a day, all of that. We wouldn’t be here without them.’
For Aidan, the family support is particularly significant. Having only just secured his first national title, he doesn’t receive any funding – that will change if he qualifies for the Olympics in London.
‘At the end of the day, it is all about family,’ Aidan explains. ‘My parents, Natasha my other sister, my girlfriend Courtney. Without them, I wouldn’t have got to where I am. ‘I am a full-time athlete but I have no funding, so I am dependent on them and my sponsor, Clark & Co. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.’ And both siblings are keen to highlight the influence of Paul Johnston. ‘He has had a massive impact on both of us, himself and our Dad work very well together and I don’t know if we would have got to where we are without him.’ They both have a picture of Muhammad Ali as their profile pic for Whatsapp, just another way that the two siblings are similar. It was at an Olympic Games that Ali first revealed his rare talent to the world. It is where most great boxing stories began. This one started a long time ago in St Agnes’s in West Belfast, but the Olympic dream is what has driven them to keep pushing each other. And that dream was lit in 2008 when they were brought along to the Holy Family Club when Paddy Barnes brought his bronze back from Beijing.
‘That’s the first time I realised boxing was so big in the Olympics,’ Aidan says. ‘I was only 11 at the time, but remember we had a caravan in Carnlough and remember watching Paddy, Darren Sutherland and Kenny Egan. That was the Olympics that made the deepest impression.’
And Michaela notes that it was Barnes’ homecoming to Belfast with his Olympic medal that sparked her ambition. ‘I remember the buzz around Holy Family that day when Paddy came back with his medal. He was like a celebrity and that was the first time I realised how huge the Olympics were.
‘Of course, women still couldn’t fight in it. But I thought that if it was possible to get to the Olympics, I was determined to get there. And that is all I have focused on for the last eight or nine years. To call yourself an Olympian, there are very few people who can do that. And now. I am close to realising that dream.’
If she realises that lifelong dream together with her brother, it will just be another remarkable chapter in this remarkable story of the Walsh siblings.