After the hugs, the singing, the family and mistakenly spotting her dad in the crowd, there was a note of finality to Kellie Harrington’s voice. It was relief, joy, satisfaction and gratitude rolled into a scarcely believable night, the final chapter of a career lived to the full as only a world champion and back-to-back Olympic lightweight gold medallist could understand.
For much of last week Harrington had hinted and equivocated and danced around the barbed question of retirement. She was telling us without coming straight out with it. And when she did come out with it, she took it back in the next breath.
Then, after beating Wenlu Yang 4-1 on centre court at Roland Garros and a perfectly pristine end to her Olympic career, it seemed like the planets had aligned.
At 34 years old, unbeaten in Olympic boxing over two Games in Tokyo and Paris, Harrington’s end to her international career had written itself to its own conclusion on a warm night to the west of the city. In the wee hours of the morning, she came in exhausted, by then pared back with all the craziness and energy of the night flushed from her system.
Ciara Mageean: ‘I just felt numb. It wasn’t even sadness, it was just emptiness’
Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year: Celebrity ‘manifesting’ influences 2024 choice
Sonia O’Sullivan: A jog down Olympic memory lane shows how far Irish athletes have come
Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn retires from competitive breaking after Olympic upset
“There are no more mountains, that’s it. I’m done now,” she said. “The next chapter is going to be my life chapter. It’s for me and Mandy [her wife] now to do what we’re doing. Who knows what that’s going to be? But I can’t wait to just live my life, not that I’m not living my life ... that’s like, what are you talking about.
“But to not be looking at the scales every morning, and all boxers are the same: to be able to train the way we want to train, because everything is like, ‘you can’t do that because you might get injured’.
“Or, ‘You can’t do that because you’ve training tomorrow, and if you do that you’ll be tired tomorrow and you won’t have anything to be able to spar’. I want to just do whatever type of training I want to do. Stuff like that, so no more mountains. No more mountains!”
Her plan was to retire after Tokyo. But Covid hit, the 2020 Games were staged in 2021 and the last sprint, the last piece of her competitive boxing life facing the tyranny of the scales every day, was just a three-year term and not the normal four.
But as she spoke from the heart, it wasn’t just making weight but the rhythm of life: freewheeling, being open to spontaneity and indulgences, sharing them with family and friends. Boxing has been Harrington’s best friend and one of her most demanding. They are not falling out, but they have reached agreement about respectful distance.
If it had been a four-year cycle Harrington believes she would not have made history, would not have become the first Irish boxer and Irish woman to defend an Olympic title.
“I don’t know. That was the whole thing,” she says. “After Tokyo I was like retired. That’s what the plan was, to retire after Tokyo. But then it was like, it’s only an extra three years. That’s what people were saying and I was like when you think of it that way it kinda does fly in.
“It did until [the Olympic qualification event] Poland last year, flew in and then, after Poland, because it was a year [ahead] that I had qualified ... I just think you’re probably better off qualifying closer to the time nearly ... it was so long, like so long. I’m gone off on a tangent now, forget what you asked me.”
If it was four years, do you think you’d have made it?
“I don’t think so, probably not. We were going through a pandemic and everybody needed something to give them a lift, and I think, at that time, to get people to smile about something. That’s what the last one was for, you know and this one ... when you reach a mountain, find a bigger mountain and that’s what I done and it wasn’t easy go climb that mountain.
“It’s been three years of madness. It’s been hard, so I decided that it’s for me. I’m doing it for me and me alone and that’s what it is. I’m just so happy and I’m so proud of myself and to be here. Just to be doing what I’m doing.”
As a fight, the final was like how Harrington had approached the previous three bouts. Control, precision, the cold side of a warm personality, and finding a way whether it was against a puncher like Brazilian pro Beatriz Ferreira, a Colombian southpaw, or a technical boxer like the top-seeded Yang. Harrington was better on the Philippe-Chatrier centre court than she was in Tokyo’s Kokugikan Arena. No matter. Her mind and her body were also aligned and she is not disappearing. She isn’t going away.
The wisdom, experience, and most of all her personality will linger on like her achievements. Just Britain’s Nicola Adams and the USA’s Claressa Shields have done what she has done and won back-to-back golds.
Harrington had Paris and Roland Garros in the palm of her hand. “Absolutely amazing. It was brilliant,” she said. “I never expected anything like that. I am never ever going to forget this. Ever. I thought I seen me da, though. Ah stop it. I was `there’s me da’ (laughing). Are you serious. I actually thought I saw me da. Oh man.
“Me two brothers were there and Mandy was there ... just getting to do this and them there and to see me do it. It’s amazing because they know me. They know, know me and they know, know everything about me and about life.”
And now she is going to get to live some.
