Gavan Casey

YOU’RE IN THE middle of writing a piece about Amy Broadhurst on Monday and you wonder would it be fair to suggest that Olympic qualification in Poland this week would eclipse even her extraordinary achievements in 2022.

Then comes an Instagram post from Broadhurst herself, sent a couple of hours after she destroyed Latvia’s Beatrise Rozentale to reach the quarter-finals of the European Games in Poland — and, in turn, move to within one victory of another continental medal and a place on the plane to Paris 2024.

“Boxing on Wednesday against GB for a bronze medal and a place at the Olympic Games,” Broadhurst wrote. “My whole life in 9 minutes awaits me and best believe I’m leaving everything in there! For the 5-year-old Amy…”

So, yeah, it’d probably be fair to put Olympic qualification on a pedestal where Broadhurst is concerned, alright.

Scroll up to the top of her Instagram account and you’ll see three ‘pinned’ posts — i.e. posts that retain their place atop your profile even when it’s updated with newer ones.

The first is a picture of the Dundalk woman standing atop the podium in Istanbul, Turkey, where she won World Championship gold in the light-weltwerweight (63kg) bracket 13 months ago.

The second is a picture of her celebrating her Commonwealth Games gold at lightweight (60kg) in Birmingham, England, three months later.

The third is a picture of Broadhurst looking disbelieving as she contends with the magnitude of having achieved an all-time great Irish boxing year, taking 63kg gold — as well as Boxer of the Tournament — at the European Championships in Budva, Montenegro, last October.

Each social media keepsake adds a layer of context to her efforts at the European Games in Kraków-Małopolska this week.

At last year’s Commonwealths, for which she qualified to represent Northern Ireland due to her being a member of St Bronagh’s ABC in Rostrevor, Co. Down, Broadhurst competed in her preferred division of lightweight, or 60kg. She cleaned house.

At both the Worlds and the Europeans to either side of her Birmingham success, she boxed a full 3kg — or just over six and a half pounds — above her optimal competitive weight, because reigning Olympic champion Kellie Harrington remains Ireland’s priority selection at lightweight.

Considering the reality that even the odd pound can make such a marked difference in boxing, Broadhurst’s achievements up at 63kg in 2022 were nothing short of extraordinary. She didn’t just win the Europeans or the Worlds — she made shite of a field consisting mostly of naturally larger women, winning every fight bar one by either unanimous decision or stoppage.

At just 26, Broadhurst’s legend in Irish boxing is already secured. In a sport which has yielded over half of Ireland’s 35 total Olympic medals since we first competed at the summer Games as an independent state in 1924, she is one of just five Irish boxers ever — male or female — to claim World Championship gold.

And yet, to the boxer herself, none of this will hold a candle to her reaching the Paris Olympics should she find a way to see off Britain’s decorated Rosie Eccles in her European Games quarter-final on Wednesday.

Why? Well, zoom out, and Broadhurst is remarkably competing in Poland up at 66kg, or welterweight, a full 6kg and two divisions above her preferred fighting weight. Reason being: Olympic champ Harrington is bang on track again at lightweight (60kg), and light-welterweight (63kg) is not an Olympic division.

And zoom in, and as Broadhurst herself outlined on Instagram, reaching the Olympics has been almost her sole purpose in the ring since she first laced up a pair of gloves 21 years ago, long before Katie Taylor even made such a pipedream possible for female fighters the world over.

The most recent handful of those years have been the longest, too.

Cast an eye back to February 2018: Broadhurst had already won more underage medals at both national and international level than you could count on three hands. With the silhouette of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo beginning to form on the horizon, the up-and-coming southpaw entered the Seniors at 60kg and went after then-World Championship silver medallist Kellie Harrington. Broadhurst was promptly put in her place, dropping a UD and a fair few tears as Harrington cemented her berth as Ireland’s lightweight no.1.

Broadhurst did some soul-searching on the backroads, winning the European U22s as well as an English Senior title for which she qualifies to compete through her dad, Tony. With Harrington locked in at lightweight, Broadhurst was selected as Ireland’s entry at light-welter — a non-Olympic division — at the 2018 Worlds in New Dehli, India.

This made for Broadhurst’s breakout tourney as a senior international: she beat two high-level opponents before getting screwed against home-country fighter Simranjit Kaur in the quarter-finals, consequently missing out on what would have been a transformative World Championship medal as well as the guaranteed state funding that would have followed.

Down at lightweight, meanwhile, it just so happened that Harrington rubber-stamped her status as a generational pugilistic talent. The Dubliner became just the third ever Irish boxer after Katie Taylor and Michael Conlan to claim World Championship gold, beginning a reign at 60kg which, to this day, has only really ever been interrupted by injury.

There was still another national Seniors to go before Tokyo Olympic qualifiers, but given that even a victory over Harrington at the National Stadium wouldn’t necessarily guarantee her selection for the Olympic spot at 60kg, Broadhurst thought it folly to challenge the newly crowned world champ.

“I have to take a step back for Kellie ahead of the Tokyo Olympics because of what she’s just achieved, which I’ve accepted,” Broadhurst told The 42 a couple of days after the 2018 Worlds. “Come 2024, though, I won’t be taking a step back. That’s my time. The Olympics has always been a dream of mine, and I’m not going to be waiting 10 years or whatever to get there.

“Going into 2024, I think I’m going to be in my prime. In four years, I don’t think Kellie will be able to beat me. As a boxer, I have so much to learn and so much to experience, whereas she has already experienced it all. She’ll really be on her way out then, in 2024. She’ll be 33 or 34.

“I’m patient enough to hang around for a few years, but come 2024 I’m going to be hungry to get to the Olympics. I won’t be stepping down for anyone then.”

It almost goes without saying that Harrington didn’t appreciate Broadhurst’s figurative guard of honour.

“I’m going to be quite frank about this because I’m hearing a lot about her ‘agreeing to step back’, right?” the world champ told The 42 after the Seniors the following February.

“I beat her last year, and I would have beaten her again if she was there this year. So, when someone says they’re ‘agreeing to step back’, take it with a pinch of salt.

“I’m the number-one Irish 60-kilo… She had the chance to get in there and prove herself and she didn’t take it, like.

“I like her, she’s a great young one, she’s a great athlete, she’s a fantastic fighter. But it is what it is.

“You can’t be saying she’s agreed to step back because that kind of belittles me a little bit. And it really does annoy me because it sounds as if someone is saying, ‘Ah, she agreed to step back and give you that chance, Kellie’. Well, no, actually — she didn’t have the balls to step up and take the chance herself, so…

“She done it because she didn’t want to fight me, and that’s it.”

It seemed for all the world that Irish amateur boxing had found the kind of flagship rivalry that would gain mainstream media traction and even dictate that Ireland’s state broadcaster might show an interest in the country’s most successful sport internationally.

In the four and a half years since, however, Broadhurst and Harrington have never shared the ring.

It’s not so much that Broadhurst lacked the figurative cojones to challenge Harrington at lightweight, but more that the IABA High Performance Unit wanted another major medal threat at light-welter and continually persuaded Broadhurst to build her own adjacent legacy at 63kg.

In theory, Broadhurst might have forced a different outcome had she capitalised when she subbed in at 60kg for injured champion Harrington at the 2019 Worlds, but she suffered quarter-final heartbreak at the hands of Katie Taylor’s Rio 2016 conqueror, Mira Potkonen, who incidentally had also beaten Harrington in their past three meetings.

In reality, too, the HPU just prefers Harrington as a lightweight option, regardless of Broadhurst’s achievements at either 60 or 63. It’s not a personal thing, but one of mathematics: the Irish coaches and selectors use a complex system of metrics as part of their athlete assessments and, long story short, the numbers have always suggested that Harrington is fractionally more likely than Broadhurst to win a major international tournament at 60kg. This stands to reason, too, in that Harrington is widely recognised as the best lightweight in the world and will remain so until somebody proves otherwise.

Over time, Broadhurst has reluctantly accepted this reality. Indeed, having trained together in Abbotstown and travelled alongside each other to umpteen countries over the past four years, she and Harrington have even become friendly, each of them regularly heard from ringside vocally supporting the other’s efforts.

After her triple gold-medal haul at last year’s Worlds, Commonwealths, and Europeans, it was made clear to Broadhurst that Harrington — who hasn’t lost a bout since February 2021 — would be given the opportunity to try to defend her Olympic crown.

Broadhurst was caught between a rock and a hard place. The next Olympic division up from lightweight (60kg) is welterweight (66kg), in which the Dundalk woman really has no business competing given the huge size and weight discrepancy. Meanwhile, her explosive exploits throughout 2022 had earned Broadhurst plenty of suitors in professional boxing, in which her skill and nuclear left hand would make her a fortune.

In January of this year, however, Broadhurst’s name was included among the list of 66kg entrants for the Seniors. She was going full Hail Mary on the Olympic dream.

Those national championships weren’t long becoming a nightmare: having swallowed some leather to see off Kaci Rock in her semi-final, Broadhurst met the brilliant Gráinne Walsh in one of the most anticipated Senior finals in years.

In a pulsating, violent encounter, Walsh simply had too much torque for the markedly smaller Broadhurst, who fought valiantly but was hurt several times on her way to a split-decision defeat.

Broadhurst’s tears were indicative of someone who realised that she hadn’t just narrowly lost a Senior final, but perhaps her life-long dream as well. For all the years of relentless training, for all of the countless medals on both national and international stages, circumstances had simply conspired against her.

It wasn’t over yet, though, as it turned out: the prestigious Strandja Memorial tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria, the following month, both she and Walsh were selected to represent Ireland in the 66kg bracket.

One last chance — although in truth, from the outside looking in, Broadhurst’s selection seemed not only optimistic but borderline irresponsible given how obviously she had struggled with the huge weight climb at the Seniors.

Naturally, she went and won the whole bloody thing.

It was an almost comically impressive run: a belligerent Broadhurst beat a 2022 Asian bronze medallist, the 2022 World Championship silver medallist, the 2019 World Championship silver medallist, and a solid German respectively to clinch Strandja gold.

At any point, she could have turned pro. She could have sacked the whole thing off, disillusioned. Or worse still, she could have defected to her father’s homeland of Britain into whose team she would have walked at 60kg.

Instead, Amy Broadhurst went chest-out in the Irish vest and locked herself in for selection at 66kg for these European Games, where she now stands just one victory away from punching her ticket to Paris.

Tomorrow at 12:45. Her whole life in nine minutes.