Kellie Harrington: A hero with humility

The bronze won by the women’s four of Aifric Keogh, Eimear Lambe, Fiona Murtagh, and Emily Hegarty secured a spot on the medal table. Then Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy chipped in with a rare gold and Team Ireland was really tucking in.

The swimmers, spearheaded by Mona McSharry, made a splash of their own but then Super Sunday came and went with nothing more than disappointment and ill-fortune for four podium prospects and the second week seemed to take that as its cue.

A sense of fatigue, of a nation turning its attention elsewhere, began to take root.

Aidan Walsh fracturing his foot in celebration at securing a bronze was the most obvious evidence that maybe the luck of the Irish wasn’t in. Natalya Coyle’s chances being scuppered by a skittish horse only confirmed the suspicion.

Through all this was Kellie Harrington.

She won three fights in that otherwise forgettable spell, each one breathing new life into the cause and, if she edged some close calls against Thailand’s Sudaporn Seesondee and again in the decider against Brazil’s Beatriz Ferreira, then she earned them.

Harrington was magnificent in the ring, never more so than against Ferreira when she absorbed the discordant tones of a difficult first 90 seconds and retuned the fight to her own wavelength from there on in.

Her medal will stand as testimony to what she achieved here but the memories of the manner in which she won it offer the truest reflection of her campaign. It was a performance to rank in the highest echelons of Irish sports history.

Just as pleasing was the manner in which she bore all this, both the pressure and the acclaim. Like all of Ireland’s medallists here, the Dubliner

matched whatever she did in competition with a humility and honesty outside of it that was every bit as inspiring.

“I can’t believe that I inspire anybody. That’s the hard thing to get my head around.

“But I know I am in the limelight, and I know I have to be a role model, and I just want to be the best version of me that I can be so that I can inspire kids and be good role model for kids. I want them to bring out the best version of themselves.

“They don’t have to be Irish champion, world champion, Olympic champion. They don’t have to be anything only a better version of themselves and if I can do that I’ll be happy. For me, I love giving, and if I can give someone a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of get up and go, that means the world to me.”

Just the third woman to claim a gold medal for Ireland, she was told. It wasn’t an angle she had even considered but she has reflected most of the praise coming her way towards teammates, coaches, and family this last week or so. It was no different then.

She turned the statement on its head, lingering not on the past or the present, but on what future generations of Irish girls can do in the ring, and offering words of encouragement to kids and clubs shuttered by the pandemic.

“I just want to say to all those kids and teenagers out there, ‘get back in’.

“You might have missed the year but you can take it back like that. You might be unfit but you will never lose the skills that you have so get back in, get back at it, start off small and work at it.”

Her words are powerful, not just for their content but for the sincerity with which they are offered. And they carry a weight borne of her own struggles from troubled teenager to raw boxer whose lack of real belief was shared by most of those around her.

It was 2016 when she first thought that maybe the Olympics was a stage where she could sing.

The penny dropped after a competitive sparring session with Estelle Moseley between the Frenchwoman’s successes at the World Championships and Olympic Games.

That was the point when Harrington first believed a day like yesterday was possible.

Once enough others beyond the confines of her local club came to the same conclusion then she had enough of a unit around her to make it happen.

Kellie Harrington: Olympic champion.

She has been adamant that her time in Japan won’t define her. That her journey isn’t over. Win or lose, she was going back to work part-time on the wards at St Vincent’s Hospital. The media and commercial worlds will come for their piece of flesh but her circle will stay small.

When she met John Conlan, one of her coaches, in the mixed zone yesterday she hugged him for an age and cried, and then she joked about how heavy the medal around her neck actually was.

She will wear it lightly. Conlan himself is sure of that.

“She’s just a great human being. I asked the other day, ‘what is the best version of yourself?’ and she said ‘someone who gives and shares’.

“That’s her in a nutshell. She gives everything in training. She wants to succeed. She says she doesn’t, but she does want to succeed.

“But then she’ll go back and do a night shift in the hospital. She’s amazing.

“She’s a great human being and it’s well deserved. The fact she doesn’t believe it makes it even better. In three days’ time she’ll wake up with a medal around her neck. She was brilliant.”