DARREN SUTHERLAND:DARREN SUTHERLAND, who has died aged 27, was one of Ireland's outstanding Olympic athletes. He was a member of the Irish boxing team that travelled to Beijing in 2008 and won three Olympic medals.
Dublin’s Ken Egan, with whom Sutherland regularly roomed, won silver, while Belfast’s Paddy Barnes and Sutherland won bronze, making the Beijing Olympics the most successful by an Irish boxing team since 1992, when Michael Carruth and Wayne McCullough won gold and silver medals respectively in Barcelona.
Following that success Sutherland moved to London where he turned professional and was training in the gym of the well- known London based promoter Frank Maloney. It was Maloney, with whom Sutherland had lived for his first six months in London, who found Sutherland’s body in his rented apartment in Bromley, Kent, on Monday, September 14th. The boxer, who had apparently been suffering from depression, took his own life.
The bare facts of Sutherland’s boxing career tell only so much about the young man, who was widely believed to have had the ability to become a world champion in the super-middleweight division of the sport as well as the charisma to turn himself into a star if he so wished. Appropriately his ring name was “Dazzler”.
At every opportunity Maloney openly admired his Irish fighter. “Darren is the full package,” he said on many occasions. “He was the only boxer I wanted from China [Olympics].” Sutherland’s influence reached outside of the ring and his infectiously positive attitude to the sport and life in general is what everyone who came into contact with him remembers.
A model professional, he always kept himself in excellent physical condition. He never drank, never smoked and the strict regime of his life as an Olympic athlete and latterly professional boxer never dulled his playful, boyish side.
“He was a big, big soft nice lad, a great character, a good talker. He could have had anything in life,” said Martin Power, the 75-year-old secretary of the Saviours club in north inner city Dublin, where Sutherland spent most of his amateur boxing years.
Power tells the story of Sutherland arriving to the Saviours gym one morning five or six weeks prior to his death. Although he had been in London for almost a year, he walked through the door as if he was still the star act in the club.
Climbing into the ring with four or five kids, they all ended up on top of their hero shrieking with laughter, good naturedly pummelling him to the canvas. Despite his box-office looks and shinning confidence, Sutherland assumed his elevated status with modesty and was never aloof.
Born in Dublin to father Tony, from the Caribbean island of St Vincents and mother Linda from Dublin, the Sutherland family moved to London when Darren was three years old, but returned to Ireland before then moving to St Vincents when Darren was seven years old. They returned to Ireland again and settled in Navan when Darren was 11 years old.
By then, he had started boxing at the St Brigid’s club in Dublin before growing ambition took him across the city to St Saviours, where he spent most of his amateur years.
From the early days he showed that he had boxing talent and when he was 17 years old was invited over to Brendan Ingle’s gym in Sheffield to train as an amateur. Ingle, who is from Ringsend in Dublin, has made a name producing professional fighters such as “Prince” Naseem Hamed. Sutherland stuck with it for some time, but he returned to Dublin around 2000.
At 20 years of age he decided that he wanted to educate himself as he had left school early to go over to Sheffield.
With the sort of commitment he exemplified in the gym, he threw himself into his studies at St Peter’s College in Dunboyne, where he sat the Leaving Certificate. He passed with flying colours and was accepted into Dublin City University on a sports scholarship, where he studied Sports Science.
By that stage he had established himself as one of the best amateur fighters in Europe, winning Irish titles in 2006, 2007 and 2008 as well as European Union titles in 2007 and 2008.
It hadn’t been all good fortune, however, and in 2006 he suffered a freak eye injury in an international match against Russia in Dublin. Doctors at the time said he may never fight again, but a year later he was back at the top.
Professionally, he won his first four fights, but in recent weeks had been concerned about another eye injury that was healing slowly. His father Tony said that he feared his son was also losing confidence as a fighter.
An appointment had been made to see a psychologist in London on the evening of the day he was found dead.
He is survived by his mother Linda, father Tony and two sisters Nicole and Shaneika.
Darren Sutherland: born April 18th, 1982; died September 14th, 2009