COVER STORY:I HAVEN'T ACTUALLY qualified for the Olympics yet." Boxer Katie Taylor is pondering the golden ambitions of a nation that currently rest entirely on her shoulders. "But people are saying that I'm the number one chance for an Olympic gold medal you know? No pressure!" she laughs.
She’s under no illusions. She knows the way of the Irish – our habit of building up our heroes only to be disappointed when they crumble under the pressure – but Taylor wears the weight of all that expectation with a light determination. “It’s not going to be an easy road over the next few years, I know that,” she says. “But I don’t think you can really prepare yourself for the pressure – you just have to deal with it as it comes along. I’ve dealt with it so far so hopefully with the family support I’ll be alright.”
At just 23, Taylor is the reigning world lightweight boxing champion, a title she has won twice, and she has just defended her fourth European title. It has been a phenomenal career so far but with the Olympics in the fray, Taylor is no longer a cult heroine in a minority sport. She has been catapulted smack-bang into the mainstream.
We’re sitting in the boxing club by the harbour in Bray, Co Wicklow, the place where it all started for Taylor. Punch bags hang from the ceiling and the boxing ring dominates the room. “We don’t have changing rooms yet but the equipment is good,” Taylor says, looking around.
Agreeably chatty, she seems to be taking the increased attention that she has been getting in her stride. She’s slim without looking remotely fragile. Wearing her trademark tracksuit, she’s tomboyish and pretty, with enviable skin and intense brown eyes.
She’s on a break from boxing at the moment after retaining her European lightweight title in the Ukraine at the end of September. Incredibly, Taylor made it through the entire competition without a single point having been scored against her. In other words, not a single one of her opponents managed to land a proper punch.
“Yeah, that’s never happened to me before,” she says. “Most fights in a championship are really close. It was just the way it happened this time. The girls I was boxing against were just made for me.” This is a typical Taylor answer – acknowledge the achievement, cool the hype, move on. She’s an interesting mixture of self-assurance and modesty.
Over the next few weeks of her break she’ll play some international football, hopefully helping the Republic of Ireland to qualify for the World Cup. Just four days after her European win, Taylor played in the qualifier against Kazakhstan, setting up the winning goal. She hasn’t ruled out returning to the sport but if she does, it will be after the Olympics.
She could have made a career in soccer. Before she sat her Leaving Cert, a number of US colleges had noted her talent. Universities such as St John’s NYC and Hofstra in Long Island, where women’s soccer is huge, offered her scholarships, but Taylor turned them down, concluding that if she accepted, she would have to leave boxing aside. That was never going to happen. Instead, she went to Sallynoggin College of Further Education to study leisure management and fitness instruction. As the boxing took over, however, she dropped out to focus on her sport. “It’s something I’d like to go back to. After.”
Sport has always been her thing. It was athletics and Gaelic games in the early days. Then soccer took over in her teens. Boxing was in the background from about the age of 12 when her father, Pete, brought her along to the club. She remembers her first evening. “I was in the ring that night and I sparred with someone. I always kind of knew how to throw a punch even before I started. It just felt so natural for me.”
Boxing appealed to her competitive nature. “Even when I was small my parents used always say to me, ‘You have to be able to enjoy your sport,’ but I didn’t really understand that,” she says. “I just wanted to win. In the athletics when I was younger I used to be so focused, even at that age when I was running races, it was all about the winning for me. I don’t know why.”
The enforced breaks from training are tough going. “After the first week, I have to be kind of forced away from the boxing club. It’s hard to get back into a normal lifestyle because I’m training all the time. I don’t know what to do with myself,” she says.
She tries to catch up with friends during the down time. “I don’t get to see much of them when I’m training. It’s all a training, eating and sleeping sort of thing. But I do try to go out and have a good time when I’m on a break.”
Boxing is in the blood. Pete, her dad and coach, is a former senior champion, and her two older brothers boxed. “My mum was the first female referee in Ireland as well,” she says. “My family were always really encouraging. I don’t think I could have got to where I am without them.”
It may sound like false modesty but there is a lot of truth in that statement. Her dad has coached her since day one and her family seems to act as a cocoon of sorts, enabling that single-minded focus. There will be enormous hype as London 2012 approaches but her family have protected her from that before and she expects they will endeavour to do so again. “They keep a lot of the negative stuff away from me,” she says.
Her father is clearly at the centre of her boxing life. He monitors her opponents so she doesn’t have to. He looks after her schedule and her training. It enables her to think of her next tournament and nothing else.
Surely her mind ventures to the Olympic podium now and again? “Every day,” she admits. “Going up and getting a gold medal around my neck– yes, I think about it. At the same time I have to focus on each competition. Every other girl in the world will be getting better so I’ll have to keep improving myself.”
The sport has come a long way from when she first started. From about the age of 12, she trained twice a week in the boxing club but there were no tournaments to go to, no competitions to aim for. “It was very hard for the first few years because I was training away with the lads. I saw them going off to competitions and I wasn’t getting any fights.”
Her time came at the age of 15 when in 2001, she fought Belfast boxer Alanna Murphy in the first sanctioned female fight this country had ever seen. Taylor is obviously proud of her part in that little piece of history. “That was a really important night for women’s boxing in this country,” she says. “I went through four years before that just training and not getting fights, but then all of a sudden it came along. It was really nerve-wracking for me but it was a great night I have to say.” She won of course.
It’s one thing sparring during training, but seeing your youngest daughter or your little sister getting into a boxing ring to fight competitively must be difficult for parents and siblings no matter how supportive they are. “My dad can’t wait for me to retire,” Taylor laughs. “I get nervous but he’s always the most nervous of anyone. He goes really white in the face before a fight.”
Her career so far has been spectacular. It seems strange that her profile hasn’t risen faster. Her fights are rarely televised. Camera crews only turned up for her final bout in last year’s world championship. It rankles slightly. “I think if I was a man, having achieved what I’ve achieved, the cameras would be following me all over the place to these competitions,” she says. “When the lads were over at the world championships there were camera crews there, but I’m over at the worlds or the Europeans and there’s no one over there with me. It kind of bothers me if I sit down and think about it, but I have to let that kind of thing go over my head.”
Being female in a traditionally male sport has also been a challenge. “There probably were negative attitudes around, but my family kept that all away from me for the most part. These people who are against women’s boxing have probably never even seen an amateur fight or a women’s fight. They don’t understand the difference between the professional and the amateur sport. I’ve had far more injuries playing football than I’ve ever had in boxing,” she giggles slightly. “It’s mad that, isn’t it?”
In the business of sport, at least, the female factor appears to be working to her advantage. Traditionally it has been quite difficult for amateur boxers to get company sponsorship. Taylor, however, is red-hot property in the world of PR, and companies are falling over themselves to sign her. “I got a great sponsorship deal with Adidas over the past few months and I think we’re talking about a car deal. I’m with Toyota now,” she says. Don’t expect to see her face everywhere, though. Taylor is in charge and no matter what comes her way, her training schedule comes first.
What has given her the edge over the past number of years? Taylor pauses. “I don’t know. I think maybe I’m a lot more focused than a lot of the girls out there. Because of my lifestyle as well, I suppose. I’m a Christian. God’s in my life as well. That gives me a lot of strength. Things like that make you feel really strong and confident. I train very hard – I’ve got a great coach, a great family. I think all of these things add up and make you who you are.”
Now that the Olympics are on the radar I wonder whether her training circle has expanded to include other specialists such as nutritionists and psychologists. Taylor shakes her head. “I don’t really believe in psychologists,” she says. “I think you’re either mentally strong or you’re not. I think my dad as my coach is my best psychologist. He knows me so well. Then my mum feeds me – she’s my nutritionist I suppose.”
Will her training regime change? “The Olympics has been in my mind for years and years. It’s all I’ve been aiming for, so I’m not going to change anything. I’m going to keep listening to my father. He’s going to work out all my training for me I suppose. I think after this year it’s going to get really, really intense,” Taylor says.
Famously clean living – Taylor doesn’t drink – she takes her position as a role model very seriously. She must have some guilty pleasures though? “Chocolate!” she says immediately. “I’m a complete chocoholic. I love Kinder Buenos, but I’ll eat anything.”
It’s the one vice that can impinge on training. “I have to sneak it up to my room sometimes when I’m making my weight for competitions,” she says. “It’s really hard.”
To rave about her career so far and assume that a medal, let alone the gold, is in the bag would be foolhardy. Taylor is all too aware that with the Olympic announcement, the world of women’s boxing will have changed considerably by 2012. “People are improving every year. There’ll be more and more money pumped into it now. There are only three weight categories going into the Olympics so everyone will be going up and down to fit those weights. The Chinese, the Russians, all of the former eastern bloc countries are really strong.”
Boxing is simply her passion. “I love the build- up to a competition. The competition part is the best part. After training so hard I can’t wait to start boxing. I love the training part as well.”
She’s not so naive to think that over the next few years her life won’t change but she’s hoping to avoid most of the fuss. “My life will probably change in the sense of the attention I get and the pressure of the build up,” she says. “But hopefully, with my parents around, I don’t think it will change much really. I hope not anyway. I love my life the way it is.”
Going For Gold: Katie Taylor’s career so far:
1998A young Katie Taylor goes with her dad to his boxing club and gets in the ring on her first night.
October 200115-year-old Taylor beats Belfast's Alanna Murphy in the first-ever sanctioned female boxing match at the National Stadium in Dublin.
May 2005Taylor becomes the first Irish woman to win gold at the Senior European Championships in Norway. She's 18 years old.
September 2005She reaches the quarter-finals of the World Championships in Podolsk, Russia.
September 2006Warsaw, Poland. Katie wins her second European gold medal in a row, beating reigning world champion Tatiana Chalaya of Chechnya.
November 2006Taylor wins her first world championship in India, beating Annabella Farias of Argentina in the 60kg final.
October 2007She wins her third European Championship in a row. This time the competition is in Denmark and she beats Sandra Brugger of Switzerland in the final.
November 2008Taylor successfully defends her 60kg world title with a convincing win over local heroine Cheng Dong of China in the final.
December 2008She's named the International Boxing Association's Female Boxer of the Year.
September 2009Taylor successfully defends her fourth European title in the Ukraine, and doesn't concede a single point in three bouts.
September 2010Taylor is set to defend her title during the sixth Women's World Boxing Championships in Bridgetown, Barbados.
