Kellie Harrington double-bubble gold: an Olympic icon, a hero for our divided times
Trailblazer, worker, carer, Dub, amateur boxer, Ireland have been mining precious metal from her from day one.
Even before Kellie Harrington secured her second Olympic gold medal this evening, she was already one of the greats.
Given her sporting ability, her demeanour and slightly wonky mile-wide grin, it doesn't even come close to being a split decision.
Yet medals or not, with such as Kellie, trailblazer, worker, carer, Dub, amateur boxer, Ireland have been mining precious metal from day one.
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That she is so-celebrated in her place of birth, some 800m as the crow might fly due north from the Custom House in Dublin, is perhaps as it also doubles as her 'every-day'.
Portland Row is a tight-knit community, the one most heavily damaged in our own 'day of infamy' by the German bombing of the North Strand in the early hours of March 31, 1941.
The area was almost completely destroyed, flattened; 28 people were killed and thousands wounded but the L-shaped two story Empress Terrace block (built 1886) where the Harrington family lived remained standing.
The Nazis, it seems, couldn't flatten the Harringtons just as Italian, Thai and Columbian have attempted previously.
Because Portland Row would have celebrated Kellie as one of their own win or lose.
All the more remarkable as she is a member of the LGBT+ community, something that says a lot about 21st century working class Dublin. But then Kellie, a general operative in a hospital, is a fully paid up member of that working class community.
Moreover having announced she is retiring after the Olympics, it is clear she won't be turning professional.
It won't be feet up with money in the bank and it is interesting that at her fighting weight is where the money is to be made in women's boxing.
Kellie boxes at 60kgs, she is a lightweight in women's pro game; Katie Taylor, 61 kgs, is a world champion lightweight who chooses to also box up at junior welterweight.
Could we, in our hearts, watch Kellie fight Katie - I don't think so.
But then boxing is such an emotive sport and while the world might be better off for the Olympics wanting to stamp out a world of corrupt officialdom, fiefdoms, the panjandrums and petty mandarins who run the sport.
It is hard to think of any sport that is purer other than running and as UFC fight boss Dana White once explained to me of the success of his own sport:
"If there is a playground full of kids and they are playing basketball in one corner, soccer in a second corner and smoking cigarettes in a third corner and a fight breaks out in the fourth corner...
"The other three will all stop whatever they are doing and rush over to watch it."
We, here in Ireland, see boxing as aspirational and the sport is all the better for it.
Nine year-old Kellie Harrington could go out in her tracksuit everyday and plead with the men going to the boxing clubs to bring her and teach her which, commendably, they started to do.
Local Joey O’Brien was one of the first totally defeated by the kid’s non-stop charm and determination and he explained to me: “I was a coach at the local Corinthians boxing club and lived just behind Kellie, actually my flat overlooked the yard where the kids used to play during the day.
“Suddenly, every day I had this eight or nine-year knocking on my door and hounding me, and I mean ‘hounding’ me, to get her into the boxing club and let her train.
“I soon got used to her and believed in her determination and it became heartbreaking for me to tell her each day she couldn’t become a member because the facilities weren’t there.
“She had a cousin who lived in Whitehall who had a boxing shed so everyday we would jog out to it, I would teach her some technique and we would jog back.”
Sad to relate, boxing will not be a part of the 2028 Games, a decision that will hopefully be reversed by 2032.
Boxing has always been a sport where aspirational kids have fought themselves out of tenements, barrios, ghettoes, slums, projects, been given respect, given themselves lives of part-martial dignity and, for some, provided financial security for their families.
It is the sport that had given this state, one of very poor means at the onset, more than half of our Olympic medals before these games, seventeen in total,
John McNally from Belfast's Pound Loney area, Dubliner Freddy Teidt, Drogheda's Tony 'Socks' Byrne, both Belfast's John 'Cold Eyed Assassin' Caldwell and Freddie Gilroy were on a podium in the 1950s.
Belfast's Jim McCourt was the solitary winner in the sixties, there were no Irish medals in the seventies and there was just one in the eighties Hugh 'Little Red' Russell from New Lodge, Belfast.
Dublin's Michael Carruth, Belfast's Wayne 'Pocket Rocket' McCullough, Dublin's Kenny Egan, Darren Sutherland from Dublin's north county and Belfast's Paddy Barnes were the nineties additions.
Barnes won a second medal in 2012, a decade where Bray's Katie Taylor, Mullingar's John Joe Nevin, Belfast's Michael Conlon, Belfast's Aidan Walsh and Dublin's Kellie Harrington were successful.
Ireland's only previous double medal winner, Paddy Barnes, won bronze each time; both Kellie Harrington's were of more precious metal.
Even Olympic boxing judges, inept or otherwise, would call a unanimous decision in favour of Portland Row's finest there.
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