Eight years is a long enough spell in any walk of life, but in boxing it must seem interminable considering the hard – and painful – yards that have to be put in if any level of success is to be achieved.
And looking back at where Kellie Harrington’s career was eight years ago, when she won her first Sportswoman of the Year monthly award, and the extraordinary journey she has been on since, it’s hard not to smile.
She was, she said, “a nobody” when she set off for the World Championships in Kazakhstan that year. Few outside the world of Irish boxing had even heard of her.
She went there with very little international experience, so it was largely a journey into the unknown. But, despite being unseeded, she couldn’t stop winning. She beat a Lithuanian, a German, the home favourite and a Canadian en route to the final, where she lost to China’s Asian champion Wenlu Yang.
Sonia O’Sullivan: A jog down Olympic memory lane shows how far Irish athletes have come
Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn retires from competitive breaking after Olympic upset
Olympic boxer Imane Khelif takes legal action over male chromosomes claims
Olympic Federation of Ireland confirms two candidates running to be new president
“To get to a final from being a nobody, I’m happy with that,” she said after bringing that silver home. It was perhaps only then that she realised how good she could be, having long had doubts about her own potential.
Crucially, that 2016 success ensured that she would receive some much-needed funding from Sport Ireland which would help ease the strain of juggling two jobs with her boxing.
“It will help change the colour of that medal I just got,” she said. “It will push me even more so I can come back and get that gold.”
Two years later she did just that, winning the world title in New Delhi. She was as good as her word.
Since then? Well, you know yourself. Just the two Olympic gold medals.
She didn’t even need to win that second one to earn herself a place in our 2024 roll of honour because when she beat Colombia’s Angie Valdes Pana by a unanimous decision in her quarter-final, on the last day of July, she helped herself to a slice of Irish sporting history – she became only our fourth athlete and our first woman to win medals in two Olympic Games.
At that point, the exalted club consisted only of Pat O’Callaghan (1928 and 1932), boxer Paddy Barnes (2008 and 2012) and rower Paul O’Donovan (2016 and 2021), Fintan McCarthy adding his name to the list two days later when he teamed up with O’Donovan to win yet more rowing gold.
So, once Harrington reached the final, she turned silver in to gold once more – beating, of all people, Wenlu Yang.
She could be forgiven for admitting that she barely remembered that 2016 fight, the intervening years having been rather busy. But on a never-to-be-forgotten late night at Roland Garros, the bulk of the crowd roaring Harrington on, she reversed that result from eight years earlier to strike gold yet again.
“To get to the Olympics is a mountain in itself, and then when you get there to set foot on to a podium is a massive, massive mountain,” she said.
“To see your nation’s flag at the top of the podium, that’s just special, because there’s not many people in the world who get to do it and I know I’m doing it twice now.
“A lot of the time people don’t know when to finish, so I’m happy that I am making that decision to finish it this way, my way, and go out as a double Olympic champion.”
Safe to say, Kellie Harrington is somebody.
* Lest it looks like we’ve forgotten Mona McSharry’s brilliant 100m breaststroke bronze, she was already on our 2024 roll of honour after her outstanding performances back in February – and each sportswoman can only win one monthly award in the year. But their achievements through the year are taken in to account when the overall winner is decided – so, needless to say, McSharry’s Olympic medal will be added to her 2024 accomplishments.
Previous monthly winners: December: Fionnuala McCormack (Athletics); January: Lucy Mulhall (Rugby); February: Mona McSharry (Swimming); March: Rachael Blackmore (Horse racing); April: Róisín Ní Riain (Swimming); May: Rhasidat Adeleke (Athletics); June: Ciara Mageean (Athletics).
