Shortly after the London Olympic Games in 2012, I was in a hotel in Bray talking to Katie Taylor about a book that was to come out later that year.
As an afterthought, or an idea that had just floated into her head, she sheepishly asked if it was worth mentioning that she met US president Barack Obama twice.
A couple of years before the Olympic gold medal win, she received a letter from the US Embassy in Dublin. It was an invitation to go to the US for a St Patrick’s Day lunch in Washington and meet the president.
She accepted and travelled over, staying in a hotel on Capitol Hill. On the day of the lunch, she arrived at the White House and was shown into The Blue Room, where people had gathered to listen to the formal part of the occasion.
Tom Hicks met his match when he bought Liverpool
From Tokyo to Istanbul and Croke Park: the top 25 moments of the year in women’s sport
Ciarán Murphy: One last year of togging out awaits, but I’ve caught the coaching bug
Gordon D’Arcy: Ulster laying it all on the line for Leinster acid test at the Aviva
Afterwards, when President Obama was working the room, he came to her, stopped and said: “So you’re a boxer?” He then took hold of her hands to examine them for boxing’s giveaway signs before he moved on.
The year before the London Olympics, Barack and Michelle Obama arrived in Dublin during their presidential trip to Ireland, and she met them both. The first lady stopped and spoke about her own father, who had coached her to box when she was a child.
That was followed by a brief impromptu episode of shadow boxing, Michelle and Katie throwing boxing shapes at each other.
The story comes to mind this week because the annual Teneo Sport and Sponsorship Index found that Taylor is Ireland’s most popular athlete for the ninth successive year.
Whatever people think of such ways of measuring the popularity of athletes and teams, nine years in a row says something about the grasp she has on the Irish public consciousness.
As a way of explaining the win, it was pointed out that she has continued to be the undisputed super-lightweight world champion following victory in the third of her three meetings with Amanda Serrano in Madison Square Garden in July.
But that doesn’t fully explain her continued elevated position in Ireland.
Taylor had one successful fight this year with Serrano in New York, and one successful fight last year in Arlington, Texas, also against Serrano. She had two fights in 2023, both in in Dublin’s 3Arena and both against Chantelle Cameron. The first fight against Cameron was the only blemish in Taylor’s professional career.
In 2022, she had two fights, against Serrano and Karen Elizabeth Carabajal. The first of those fights was in New York and the second was in London’s Wembley Arena.
Heading into 2026, she has had just six fights since 2022. It is hardly the kind of high-octane schedule that would allow an athlete to take up permanent residency in the national psyche.
She has also lived in the USA since she turned professional in 2016, shortly after the Rio Olympic Games. Apart from the bouts against Cameron in Dublin, she has largely remained out of sight.
Before 2023, Taylor had never been in a professional contest in Ireland and even as an amateur boxer, she was rarely seen in a competitive environment in this country.
She tended to not compete in the annual Irish Championships, gaining automatic selection for the Irish team for European, world and Olympic events.
It has been her near invisibility for long stretches that almost defies logic in these kinds of surveys. Yet there she is, still actively winning hearts and minds.
Tough and durable, she has become a metaphor for success and pioneering zeal in a sport that for many years didn’t want women. Her technical ability and talent single-handedly convinced the male doyens of boxing that there should be a female category in the Olympic Games.
Her quiet, humble nature is also an antidote to the brattish trash talk that has become the norm as promotional material in boxing.
This week, in the run-in to their irrelevant fight in Miami on Friday night, former Olympic gold medal winner and heavyweight world champion Anthony Joshua said to YouTuber Jake Paul: “If I can, I will kill you.”
As boxing shifts towards a space where online fame is more important than boxing ability and a threat to kill an opponent is seen as clever marketing, an understated Taylor pushes against the grain.
Of the 1,000 people who took part in the Teneo survey, you can be certain that many young and old women, as much as men, put their mark beside Taylor because she effortlessly crosses demographic and gender barriers.
She is Queen Bee with street cred. Men respect her, women admire her. Her broad appeal reaches both the grandfather and granddaughter, the son and mother.
She has become a national treasure hunkered down somewhere in Connecticut and if nothing else, what you learn about Taylor in her reluctance to name drop Barack and Michelle is that she is a rock of humility.
Despite the boxing achievements, her superpower is an acuity about appearing boastful or committing the sin of pride.
In the run-up to her second Dublin fight against Cameron, having lost the first, her mother Bridget sensed public concern about her daughter’s vulnerability.
“Katie is much tougher than people think,” she said.
Now approaching her 40th birthday in July, 2026, she is living her mother’s observation more than ever. An everywoman personality and murderously competitive, she has cast a spell.
And still nothing can beat the soft power of being Katie Taylor.
