MASTERCLASS
After losing round one, Kellie schooled her opponent
WHEN Kellie Harrington was shortlisted for the 2018 RTE Sports star of the year after becoming only the third Irish amateur boxer to win a world title, the patients of St Vincent’s psychiatric hospital in Fairview – where she continued to work as a cleaner, even after becoming a High Performance athlete – used to have fun at her expense.
‘They would tell me “Kellie, you will never win that award. Johnny Sexton is the best at rugby in the world, he’s just brilliant, you don’t have a chance,” Ireland’s latest Olympic champion told the Irish
Mail on Sunday back in 2019. They were right on that occasion. Come this December, only Rachael Blackmore is likely to rival her for the prize.
The whole nation has fallen for Harrington’s effervescent personality over the past fortnight but that shouldn’t obscure just how highly-skilled an operator she is inside of the ropes.
Even the most untutored eye could discern Harrington’s special talent during her extraordinary performance in the second round of yesterday’s final.
Harrington had lost the first round. Only by the narrowest of margins, as three judges sided with the more aggressive Beatriz Ferreira.
But it meant the stylish Dubliner had to change tack.
More than 80% of boxers who had won the opening stanza at these Games won their bout.
So, she switched from an orthodox stance to southpaw and used her jab brilliantly to stay out of danger. It was an inspirational three minutes of boxing which by the end, seemed to demoralise her Brazilian opponent, who was swinging at fresh air.
Resisting Ferreira’s efforts to turn the bout into a scrap, Harrington boxed cleverly and purposefully in the final round, convincing all five judges that she had done enough to win the final by unanimous decision.
As she was announced as Olympic lightweight champion, she sank to her knees before embracing her coaches Zaur Antia and John Conlan at ringside. It was another tactical and technical masterclass from Antia, the shy Georgian who has been at the hub of all Ireland’s major boxing successes in the past 15 years.
He doesn’t say much in public, but could be heard throughout the fight, prompting Harrington as she danced her way to Irish sporting immortality, leading to those ecstatic scenes back home on Portland Row. The road to that point hadn’t been smooth. She only took up boxing in her mid-teens when she admitted that she needed some direction and discipline.
And it took persistence to be accepted in her first club, remembering how she kept going down to the gym until they eventually started coaching her.
In that IMOS interview, Harrington explained that the most satisfying aspect of becoming world champion was how many people had reached out to her, who knew her as the unsure teenager who first walked through the doors of the Corinthians club in Summerhill.
‘I got messages on my Facebook page from people who boxed with me when I was younger and who had stopped boxing and ended up in prison for a while,’ she said.
‘They were delighted for me and going to go back boxing in order to get their life on the right path.
‘They were doing this because they were inspired by what I did.
‘These are not people looking to win an Olympic medal or world title, they are just looking for a change in their life and something to put them back on the right path. Without someone giving a helping hand to people like these, they will just fall off the face of the earth,’ she said.
Harrington was in her mid-20s before she truly believed she was good enough at her craft.
When she started winning national elite titles, she was doing so at 69kgs, or welterweight. She initially dropped down to 64kgs, where she won her first major international medal, a 2016 world championships silver.
However, it was only after working with nutritionist Sharon Madigan and strength and conditioning coach John Cleary at the Sport Institute that she came down to 60kgs and has since come into her own.
The 2016 world silver medal led to her first Sport Ireland grant in 2017 allowing her to concentrate more fully on boxing. Until then, she combined her training with two jobs – one as a fitness instructor and another as a cleaner at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. Even after her world title afforded her the top funding, she continued to work parttime at the hospital, and she even went back full-time for three months last year during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. Beating Sudaporn Seesondee in the 2018 world final in New Delhi was her big break, but a fractured thumb prevented her from defending the title the following year, also denying her the chance at European Games gold. The injury required surgery which kept her out of the ring for most of 2019. However, she was back in action for the original European qualifying event in London last year, before Covid-19 intervened.
Talk of the Tokyo games being cancelled increased, Harrington wondered if her Olympic dream would come to fruition.
But she kept training with her club coach Noel Burke of St Mary’s while her long-term partner Mandy Loughlin, a former boxer, helped her train in their Cabinteely home.
All that work stood to her as Harrington swept through the rescheduled Olympic qualifiers in Paris that led to her exceptional displays in Tokyo.
Having got progressively better as the Games went on, with her two best performances in her final two bouts, Harrington secured a place in the pantheon of Irish Olympic sporting greats alongside Ronnie Delany, Michael Carruth and Katie Taylor.
Nobody has deserved it more.
“Her last fights were her best performances”