It may have been Kellie Harrington’s 100th win in the North Paris Arena late on Saturday night, but the 101st will mean much more to the Irish lightweight Olympic champion than any other of her career.
Harrington spoke about the likely end of her boxing career after defeating Beatriz Ferreira, who she also beat in the final three years ago in Tokyo, to secure a guaranteed silver medal.
Win or lose the Olympic final against China’s Wenlu Yang and the 34-year-old will stop boxing at international level. Probably. Asked if she would turn professional after Paris, Harrington gave a mixed message.
“That’s never going to happen. Well, if the money is good . . . ,” she said. “No, no, I don’t want to go professional. I’m ready to . . . well, I’ll do national championships in Ireland again, but that’ll be it. No more international competitions, I don’t think.”
Her 4-1 split decision win over the Brazilian second seed in the semi-final sets up the Dubliner for a gold medal tilt against Yang on Tuesday night in Roland Garros as the boxing moves from the north of the city Exhibition Centre into the leafy suburb where the tennis stadium is located. A ring will is being set up on the 15,000 capacity Philippe Chatrier centre court once the Olympic tennis is completed this weekend.
Wang will have watched Harrington capably control a third bout of these Olympic Games and produce the result she needed to set up an unprecedented shot at a second gold medal. Dr Pat O’Callaghan in 1928 and 1932 and rowers Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan days ago are the only Irish athletes to have achieved back-to-back gold medals in 100 years of competing as an independent nation.
If she beats Yang, Harrington becomes the first woman to complete the double.
She took the sting out of Ferreira, a known puncher, who turned professional after Tokyo with five wins in as many outings, two of them by TKO. But the Dubliner won the first round 4-1 working from behind an accurate jab and keeping out of range of the dangerous Brazilian Armed Forces athlete.
The second round was mixed and Ferreira was busier and engaging Harrington more on her own terms. She made some ground there with the judges giving it to her 3-2 before Harrington went back to her clever point-scoring strategy. Wheeling out of potential trouble regularly and working the jab and backhand again, patience and accuracy paid off with a 5-0 final round to ensure the subsequent victory.
“I’m absolutely loving it,” said Harrington. “I mean, if you saw me in the Village though, you’d have to remind my face of that, that’s the only thing. But I am enjoying it. To be honest it’s a very, very lonely sport. It is lonely, a lot of the time I don’t cross the building only to go down to the food hall and then back to the room or else down to the physio, that’s it.
“So, you can imagine three weeks of that, like. And then when I come out here, I’m actually in the ring and I’m happy because when I get into that ring, I’m allowed to be the craziest version of myself.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s the best feeling ever because nobody is judging me. But I just love that feeling and as much as I say I’m going to be retired, I don’t know what I’m going to do because that feeling will be gone. So, I’ll take it step by step.”
Harrington has fought Yang before in the World Championship final in Astana in 2016 when the two boxed at the heavier light welterweight. Not an Olympic weight, they came down to lightweight (60kg) and meet for the first time in that division. Yang was the winner in Kazakhstan, but since then Harrington has prospered more at Olympic level.
“I didn’t even know until someone else said it up there,” said Harrington of the meeting eight years ago.
“I remember it was very close. I remember I thought I got the decision back then. That doesn’t mean I’m going to get the decision whenever it is that I meet her. It just means that I’ll do what I have to do and she’s going to do what she has to do.”
