Taylor back training with three long years ahead

BOXING:THURSDAY, BERLIN and the IOC pooh-bahs made for a party mood. Friday was the morning after and, following the euphoria, reality was biting.

Katie Taylor and high-performance coach Billy Walsh were removing the gold medal which public acclaim had draped around her neck, taking the women’s lightweight World and European champion off the London 2012 Olympic podium.

“It is three years down the road and a lot can happen,” cautioned former Irish champion Walsh.

The Wexford man knows how fate works. Walsh lost a box-off with Michael Carruth in 1992 for a seat on the plane to the Barcelona Olympics, then watched the final in Carruth’s house as Michael won the championship. Walsh occasionally likes to wryly point out that he was almost responsible for Ireland not winning its only boxing gold medal.

“We like to stay in the moment in this gym,” he added. “At the moment we’re looking at the (women’s) European Championships. In three years time we’ll look at the Olympics.”

Taylor has variously been described as shy, mild-mannered, courteous, modest and soft-spoken. Never one to become giddy at the prospect of a new challenge, she first needs to qualify for the 2012 games, which is likely to be at the Barbados World Championships in 2011.

But the 23-year-old knows too that the bigger nations have already begun to hotwire their Olympic engines and beef up recruitment. Remember Sonia O’Sullivan and the three Chinese runners who appeared from the mountain, fortified with Ma Junren’s turtle soup, and swept the Cork woman off the track.

The Olympic Games are as famous for the poignant upsets as the predictable brilliance of athletes such as Jamaica’s Usain Bolt or Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson.

“It’s going to be hard over the next three years. I think a lot of people feel that I’m just going to turn up and win a gold medal,” said Taylor. “All I can do is to try my best to keep going as I am and to improve as a boxer, enjoy my boxing for the next two years and, hopefully, that will lead to qualification and Olympic gold.

“Yeah, I think the last few years they’ve (China, Russia) put money into boxing anyway. I think the Chinese and the Russians have always been a force in women’s boxing and they have always been my strongest competitors as well.

“I’ve no doubt that over the next few years women’s boxing is going to improve again. It is going to be the hardest task just to qualify for the Olympics.

“In three years time you don’t know what’s going to happen. There are always going to be new girls coming up, even here in Ireland there are girls coming up, which is brilliant. I can’t afford to get complacent at all.”

Taylor is on the Irish Sports Council’s highest level in terms of funding and would receive in the region of €40,000 a year as a world-class athlete. She also benefits from being fully integrated with Ireland’s international boxing programme, the training, coaching, medical costs and travel. Her father is also part of that structure.

Taylor spars with men. It is part of her mindset to face stronger, faster, harder-hitting opponents.

“I’ve always said the Olympics are a dream and this is hopefully the start of my dream for the next three years,” she says. “I was surprised that boxing wasn’t in for the last Olympics in Beijing, so this is a big moment for me and for my family as well.

“Being in London is also great. It will be like boxing at home. The supporters I’ll be getting over there will be unbelievable as well, its going to be huge for every Irish athlete.”

Yesterday was about the excitement of London and dampening expectations, or “managing” them, as Irish Sports Council chief John Treacy said.

But there was no holding back on the magnitude of Taylor’s talent and the pride they have in her around the National Stadium.

“I’ve stated on a few occasions in different ways that she is the best athlete we have in this gym, not only in sporting terms but in lifestyle terms,” said Walsh with absolute clarity. “There are very, very few in this gym who are technically better. But when you talk about a boxer, you talk about the full package and the one who has the full package is Katie.”