Gavin Cooney reports from Paris

AND SO KELLIE Harrington bows out as a champion. 

After the inevitable had been confirmed as her arm was raised beneath the steep tiers of the Roland-Garros stands, Harrington sank to her knees to beat the canvas of the ring. Partly in celebration but also, you feel, to soak in for the last time how it felt on the palms of her hands. 

“When you reach a mountain, find a bigger mountain: that’s what I’ve done,” she told us after her victory. “And it wasn’t easy go climb that mountain.” 

But now Kellie Harrington says she’s out of mountains. Not that it’s necessarily all downhill from here. 

“That’s it,” she said. “I’m done now, like.

“The next chapter is going to be my life chapter. It’s for me and Mandy now to do what we’re doing. Who knows what that’s going to be?”

Virtually all that linked Harrington’s Olympic finals was the quality of her performance and the gold medal awarded at the end. Where she was first crowned in the empty, antiseptic environs of Tokyo’s Covid Games, last night Harrington danced and sang with thousands of Irish fans in Roland-Garros. 

“I loved Tokyo because we were all in our bubble before it and it allowed me to be focussed,” she said. “This time, obviously there’s no restrictions. A bit of outside noise was getting in, which was quite hard, but then when we get here, having the crowd out there… oh my God!

“Now I understand what professional boxing is kind of like with having a crowd like that behind you when you’re walking out.” 

Harrington and Zaur Antia celebrate in the ring. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

There is of course one other link, and that’s Zaur Antia, the coach whose influence and success in Irish sport is running out of counterparts. 

“Zaur, he knows me,” said Harrington. “All the coaches, they all know me outside of sport, and then they know me when I get to the gym. There are two different people: I’m different in the gym.

“If you walk into the gym when I’m in the middle of a training session, I’ll give you the look of death. You’d be like, ‘Jesus!’ You’d turn back around and walk out.

“Because I’m like, ‘This is my sacred place, get out.’ They know me, and we have a special bond, myself and Zaur and Noel [Burke], and all the rest of the coaches. 

“And if you don’t believe in your coaches, then it’s not possible, you can’t do what you do. I’m also challenging coaches as well. If I feel like I need something, I’ll be the first to voice it and say, “I need more sparring, I need to go here, I need to bring this person in”.

“I am kind of the creator of my own destiny in some kind of way. I’m always pushing the boundaries, and I’m always pushing the coaches as well.” 

Harrington alluded several times across her interviews to the differences between those those who know her best – “those who know know me” – and external impressions. She spoke ahead of the Games of her personal toil amid the fallout to an Off the Ball interview during which she was asked about her stance on immigration last year, revealing she went to counselling sessions. 

“It’s been three years of madness,” said Harrington without directly mentioning the interview fallout.

“It’s been hard so I decided that [the gold medal] is for me. I’m doing it for me and me alone and that’s what it is. I’m just so happy and I’m so proud of myself and to be here. Just to be doing what I’m doing.” 

Harrington said her initial plan was to retire after the Tokyo Games, but the Covid-shortened gap to the Paris Games convinced her to give it one last shot. Asked if she would have made it to Paris had it been a full four-year cycle, Harrington admitted, “I don’t think so, probably not.” 

She is retiring but wants to remain around the Irish squad, albeit not as a coach.

“They’re not getting rid of me,” she said. “They might think they are, but they’re not; they’re not that lucky.

“I want to stay around for the team. I believe that I have some good values that I can add to the team. I want to stay there and I want to help. I don’t want to be a coach, because it’s extremely hard. I did talk about wanting to become a coach, but it’s actually really, really hard.

“The work that our boxing coaches do, I am not kidding you, it’s just unbelievable.

“It’s 24/7, boxing, boxing, boxing. I know we get in and box and we’re the ones who have to fight, but they are doing pads. If we say we want to do pads at seven o’clock in the morning, they’re accommodating. They say, “Okay, no problem”, because they want to keep you happy.

“They are up. These are people who have families, and they are giving everything so that the athlete can accommodate their dreams and their desires.” 

There was one alarming postscript to a glorious night. As it stands, boxing is not on the programme for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, with a governing body yet to emerge following the IOC’s excommunicating of the scandal-laden IBA. 

It’s therefore plausible that Harrington’s fight will be Ireland’s last-ever bout at the Olympic Games. 

“I think it would be an awful shame for that to happen”, said Harrington. “We need the Olympics for funding, basically. So many kids coming through who are screaming to go to the Olympics. That’s gold for some kids you know. It would be absolutely disastrous if boxing wasn’t brought back for LA. I think it should be in.

“Boxing is a massive part of the Olympic games especially for Ireland so that would be a crying shame. I think everybody needs to do a little bit more to keep it there.”