Gavin Cooney reports from Paris North Arena

MINUTES AFTER Jack Marley had cut his heavyweight Polish opponent down to size, one of the Irish boxing coaches walked past the Irish press corralled in the interview mixed zone and grinned with more than a hint of relief. 

Aaaand we’re off. 

Marley redeemed what was threatening to be a miserable start for the Irish boxing team: before he stooped between the ropes, the Irish record in Paris read fought thrice, lost thrice. 

Dean Clancy was beaten yesterday, while Aidan and Grainne Walsh were each ejected from the preliminary round across the Sunday sessions prior to Jack’s writing the best Marley comeback parable since A Christmas Carol.

 ”I got told, ‘have no regrets’ two minutes before I stepped into the ring and I’ll always remember that”, said Marley after his round. 

Marley certainly left nothing out there. Or, at least, he left nothing beyond the mixed zone. Before he came over to talk to the Irish media, Marley grabbed a bin, half-hid from view and vomited whatever was churning within him before the fight. 

He will now fight Tajikistan’s Davlat Boltaev in a quarter-final on Thursday night. The winner of that will be guaranteed at least a bronze medal. It’s rich reward for Marley, who ignored his opponent’s significant reach advantage by pummelling him with an array of laser-accurate left jabs, propelled by a fierce kind of passion. He swept the first two rounds and then cannily left himself open to no potential disaster in shutting down the third, winning 4-1 on the scorecards.

“It was my Olympic debut”, said Marley. “I knew I needed to start as I mean to go on, and that’s what I did.

“He was using his distance and stuff ,which was hard because every step I took, he was taking two back. I just had that extra bit of work, that’s why I upped the pace and it worked well for us.”  

There was a noticeable crowd travelling from Marley’s home club of Monkstown, and the chants of Ole, Ole, Ole were undergirded by shouts of support for Marley from the other members of the Irish squad. This included Grainne Walsh, whose Olympic dreams had been shattered three hours earlier. 

“That just shows the girl she is”, Marley said of Walsh. 

“It’s an individual sport, I’m always going to take it as an individual. They are my very close friends, and I was ten times more nervous watching them yesterday than I was for myself today, and I take their losses, too, when they lose. I’m delighted to give us a little bit of positivity today.” 

This is the downside of sending your biggest-ever boxing team to the Olympics: it raises your heartbreak dividend. 

Dean Clancy was first to fight yesterday and thus first to exit, beaten in a gossamer-thin split decision and left feeling aggrieved at his Jordanian opponent’s bellicose style. “He was rough and ready, he caught me with a couple of elbows, but it’s boxing”, said Clancy, rueing the fact the Jordanian was docked only one point for hitting him on the ground in two separate grounds. 

The shape of Grainne Walsh’s sorrow was similar. Again she lost on a split decision, again the fight was fought on her opponent’s terms, and again she was left to bemoan the fact that one docked point did not become a second for recidivism. 

Walsh’s decision wasn’t quite as tight as Clancy’s as she was beaten 4-1 by Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori, and her slow start was compounded by a whitewash on the judges scorecards at the end of the second round.

But whereas Clancy was deemed the longer shot in his bout, Walsh was considered the most likely winner among the three unseeded Irish boxers not granted a bye through the first round.  

Walsh’s strength is her power from close range, to which her opponent was wise, and so she set out to spoil, grappling and hanging onto Walsh whenever she got the opportunity. 

Grainne Walsh. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

“She just smothered me from early on and was just leaning all over me”, said Walsh after her fight and through the prism of tears. “There’s a million things running through my head right now, but yeah, I’m just very frustrated.

“Obviously I’m bitterly disappointed. I just feel like I didn’t get into a flow at all.

“I’m a fighter that relies very much on getting into my flow and just using my reflexes. I just didn’t feel like I could get any of that. Anytime I got close, she was leaning on me. I was trying to set my hands free.

“But it takes two to tango, I’m not blaming her for it. Look, she did what she had to do to win the fight. 

“That’s the thing with the points deduction, I was glad that he did penalise her for it but when you’ve been penalised, she should have maybe been like, ‘Oh God, I don’t want to get another warning’.

“But actually, she didn’t step back at all. 

“I do feel like he could have warned her more because it didn’t stop her. It actually encouraged her to continue doing it and I was getting continuously frustrated, I don’t know if you could see that in there, but I tried not to let my emotions get the better of me.

“I was trying to be as present and in the moment as I could, and lap up everything. I didn’t feel like the moment got to me, although maybe it might have looked like that.

“I don’t know, I’m contradicting myself with every word I’m saying here but I enjoyed every step of getting here. I’m just frustrated at how that fight went and, look, I can beat that girl, 10 times out of 10. But it just didn’t didn’t happen today.”

Walsh’s path to the Games was heroic. She has had three surgeries on a thumb ligament she first ruptured in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games, and was medically advised to end  her career until x-rays showed the most recent problem with her thumb was a different injury. She was then beaten in a deeply controversial decision at the first Olympic qualifier event to a home-town Polish fighter, but vowed to battle back. Three months later, Walsh booked her ticket to Paris at the next qualifier event. 

Walsh has vowed once again to return, but she will be 32 by the time Los Angeles rolls around, a Games still yet to guarantee that boxing will feature on the programme. 

“I’m a moment after finishing a fight I’ve just lost, so of course my emotions are going to be all over the place”, she said. 

“But nothing takes away from how difficult it has been to get me to this position, and the people that have helped me along the way and who stood by me, because there’s an awful lot of people that come and go.There’s a handful that stick with you through the darkest of days. 

“I’m tremendously proud to be able to call myself an Olympian forever. I’m just disappointed. I didn’t probably show the best version of Grainne Walsh.” 

Tokyo bronze medalist Aidan Walsh, meanwhile, suffered what is technically his first-ever Olympic defeat, given he missed his semi-final three years ago with a fractured ankle suffered while celebrating his medal win. He was beaten 4-0 by Makan Traore of France in a fight that was much closer than the scorecards suggest. Instead Walsh was made to pay for the parsimony of his punches, as his is style. Walsh said afterwards that the referee told him in the second round, “more action”, which the Irish delegation argued had an undue influence on the judges cards for that round. 

Walsh’s success is in making it to Paris. He quit the sport for 14 months after Tokyo to prioritise his mental health, but took a call from the Irish programme an hour before the deadline for entries to the national championships, asking whether he wanted to fling himself back into the sport one last time. 

“There is no commiserations at all”, Walsh told RTÉ. “I’m winning at life, I’m happy to be here.

“I think everybody knows my journey over the last two years. To be here is a miracle for me, it’s just an absolute privilege. Regardless of win, lose, or draw, it is what it is.

“My medals in sport and boxing, they don’t mean much to me. My mental health and the people around me mean the most in my life. 

“I have a lot of good things in my life, things I didn’t have four years ago, a lot of good people.” 

The beaten Irish fighters are all allowed to stick around the Olympic village to support Marley and the rest of their team-mates still involved. While Marley now faces a four-day wait until he fights again, it won’t bother him. 

Asked how he handled hanging around until the night session today, Marley replied, “I’m used to getting out of the National Stadium ring at 11.30. This is the fucking early shift.”