OLYMPICS:WHEN HE was 11 years of age, as feisty and scrawny then as he is now, Paddy Barnes drifted down from his north Belfast home to the local boxing club, Holy Family. He did so for the usual reasons: he was bored; his friends and his cousins boxed there.

His father, Paddy snr, worried about what his young son was letting himself in for. The club assured him they would look after the kid. Then he lost his first 15 fights.

Yesterday in Beijing, Paddy snr was in the Workers' Gymnasium to see his rather unflappable son guarantee himself an Olympic medal.

Paddy Barnes claims to have little interest in boxing, never watches it on television, knows not who the pro world champion of his weight division is, and, until he qualified for the Olympics via the World Championships in Chicago last October, just assumed the World Championships were a way bigger deal.

Beijing has surprised him what with all the fuss and hoopla, but perhaps he has surprised Beijing more.

"It's amazing" said Billy Walsh, the national coach. "He is only 21. Very cool. Doesn't care about most things. He only wanted to box in the World Championships.

"He's a bit different from most lads in that pressure doesn't get to him. He was laughing and joking in the dressingroom beforehand today."

"I was talking to him yesterday," said his team captain, Kenny Egan, when all was done and dusted in Beijing yesterday, "and the wee fella is so cool. He was just saying, 'What's all the fuss? - I'm just going to go out and kill this mother."

And so it came to pass. In comprehensively out-thinking and outboxing the Pole Lukasz Maszczyk for an 11-5 win Barnes duly became another hugely successful product of the Holy Family club he dandered down to 10 years ago.

Hughie Russell, Gerry Hamill, Paul Douglas and Sam Storey have represented Ireland at Olympic Games.

Barnes's unlikely mix of aggression and cunning defence has seemed ideally suited to this tournament. Having drawn out the Pole (who beat him on his senior international debut two years ago) in the first round, which ended two-all, he permitted him to keep on coming in the second.

"He played into my hands more or less," said Barnes. "He kept coming forward bit by bit.

"He was a good boxer but I closed him down and when I got the chances I flicked the right hand in his face."

It was a description of the fight echoed in the Pole's corner.

"Lukasz had a lack of speed," said his coach Ludwik Buczynski ruefully. "He didn't follow my advice. I told him to throw straight left and right hooks but instead he threw many left jabs, which were not counted."

The Pole suffered badly two-thirds of the way through the second round when Barnes, following the pre-flight plan of punishing his opponent when he got in close, landed four scoring punches in a short and explosive period that effectively decided the fight.

Maszczyk recovered slightly and threw several, non-scoring, jabs in the last 30 seconds of the third.

Barnes led 9-5 going into the final round and, picking his openings cautiously, took no risks or punches before the final bell.

"I didn't even ask for scores going into the last round," he said. "I just felt I was in front. I felt it in my in my head . . . I was able to see and hear my family up in the stands and knew I'd be okay."

The Barnes family are in Beijing partly thanks to the munificence of the boxing fraternity.

The blazer worn by the 1952 Olympian Terence Milligan was auctioned in Belfast to raise money to help defray the cost of the trip.

It was bought by an anonymous bidder, who returned it immediately to the ownership of the Milligan family.

The gesture has brought more dividends than anybody could have guessed and on Friday the Barneses will watch Paddy fight for a place in an Olympic final.

They will give thanks too that young Barnes is such an unfussy character. In his semi-final he will meet the Chinese world champion Zou Shiming.

Last October at those World Championships in Chicago it was Zou who deprived Barnes of bronze, beating him in the quarter-finals along the way to retaining his title.

Yesterday Zou, wearing a rather flashy pair of gold boots, beat the Kazakhstani Birzhan Zhakypov to guarantee the rematch in what will be a full house on Friday evening in the Workers' Gymnasium.