The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman Award for November: Katie Taylor (Boxing)
Last but not least on our 2024 roll of honour: Katie Taylor. And no annual roll of honour would look quite the same without our five-time Sportswoman of the Year.
Once again, she was involved in a fight for the ages against Amanda Serrano, four years after they first met at Madison Square Garden. Few would have imagined that duel being topped, but somehow the pair achieved the feat in front of a crowd of more than 60,000 in Arlington, Texas in November.
It was, wrote The Irish Times’ Keith Duggan, who was there that night, a “contest wreathed in greatness”. And for those who spent a good chunk of those 10 rounds, no end of them blood-soaked, peeking from behind a cushion, it’s hard not to agree with his view that it was “difficult to watch” but “impossible to look away”.
There was always a good chance that the card-topping Mike Tyson v Jake Paul ‘fight’ was going to be a farce, and that it proved, but the quality of Taylor and Serrano’s battle put it in an even dimmer light. Roy Jones Jr was on commentary duty for the bout and described their rivalry as “the Ali-Frazier of female boxing”. Few could dispute that tag.
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We’re accustomed to seeing Taylor dig deep when she’s up against it, but there haven’t been too many times when she had to dig as deep as this. “The thought crossed our minds that this might be it for Taylor, but even in the depths of exhaustion the dazzling hand speed never failed her,” wrote Duggan.
There was, of course, no little controversy, Taylor docked a point after she opened up a deep gash above Serrano’s right eye with her head, leading to post-fight accusations from the Puerto Rican that the Bray woman was a “dirty” fighter who has the habit of “leading with her head”.
And Serrano’s camp was even less impressed with the verdict: Taylor got the nod from all three judges who each scored it 95-94. It was her 24th victory in the 25th fight of her professional career, but so epic and tight was it, a third encounter seems inevitable.
Croke Park? We’ll see. At 38, many of her most passionate admirers would love to see her walk away now from the sport, she owes it nothing, but Taylor is the best judge of what she has left in the tank. So we should leave it up to her.
She is, then, our final monthly winner in the 2024 awards, which run from December 2023 to November 2024. And looking through the names that didn’t make that list simply confirms what a remarkable year it was.
And we note a slight Wicklow annexation going on this time around, a third of this year’s winners hailing from that very county – Taylor, Fionnuala McCormack, Lucy Mulhall and Lara Gillespie.
Poor Dublin won only two – Rhasidat Adeleke and Kellie Harrington – the Garden County proving to be rather greedy more than the last 12 months.
A measure of the length and excellence of Taylor’s career is that another of our monthly winners, swimmer Róisín Ní Riain, was just two when Taylor was first crowned our sportswoman of the year back in 2007. Adeleke was a rusty old five. That’s some career.
And so, the completed list of runners and riders for the 2024 sportswoman of the year award:
December: Fionnuala McCormack (Athletics); January: Lucy Mulhall (Rugby); February: Mona McSharry (Swimming); March: Rachael Blackmore (Horse racing); April: Róisín Ní Riain (Swimming); May: Rhasidat Adeleke (Athletics); June: Ciara Mageean (Athletics); July: Kellie Harrington (Boxing); August: Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh (Gaelic football); September: Katie-George Dunlevy and Linda Kelly (Paracycling); October: Lara Gillespie (Cycling); November: Katie Taylor (Boxing).
Thoughts and prayers to the judges.
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