KNACKER. Some fool called Frank Barrett by that name once. Frank was 11 years old and walking down Castle Park feeling the sweet press of life's promise. The shock of that word stopped Frank dead in his tracks.

"Don't be calling me any names," said Frank, "it's not right."

Then, that he might be better heeded, he blurted out his solemn warning.

"I'm in the boxing club now and I don't want to be sparring you or anything like that. Call me that name again and I'll spar you, though."

Not needed. He has never lifted a bare knuckle in anger. That word still carries its bitter sting though.

"Travellers are just gone used to the way things are," says Frank. "Used to the bad looks. Somebody will bump shoulders with a traveller on the street, the traveller says `sorry' but the settled person just keeps walking. You just know. If I came home from Atlanta with a medal and I could get just one thing for travellers it would be respect. Nothing else. Just respect."

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. For some people you have to spell it out.

KNACKER Lover. People used whisper that word about Chick Gillen when he first took the traveller boys in and taught them how to box.

Chick heard the hissing of forked tongues and slithering minds but Chick never was a man to give half a damn about what people said.

The club was born in 1966. Chick had been reading up on the Olympics and had liked all that stuff about every race, every colour and every creed. So the little club in Bohermorest was christened the Olympic club. Later, one Colonel Divine got in touch and told Chick that he couldn't use that name. Copyright conventions. Blah blah blah. So for divilment Chick added the five rings to the club's logo and coloured them in and that's the way it's been ever since.

Eight years ago Father Ned Crosbie brought a busload of traveller children into Chick's gym and Chick set them to sparring. Chick and Father Ned stood back and watched the lads whaling away. Father Ned, knowing the map of Chick's mind, spoke first.

"Well Chick, will any of this lot make the Olympics for you?"

"The little fat fella over there is the best of them, Father Ned. He'd be the one."

"No."

"You just watch him Father Ned. What's his name?"

"Barrett. Francis Barrett."

They had Bishop Casey for a patron for a while.

Father Ned spotted his picture in a skip outside the Connacht Tribune. The roseate bishop photographed with a clump of shamrock in his lapel. They stuck the photo up above the mirror in Chick's barber shop. The Bishop would send Chick a box of fish every year. For a long time it looked as if the fallen cleric would be the most notable thing about the Olympic boxing club.

Then young Francis lost the weight, learned the science, won his first Irish title at 14. Francis called Chick another name. Chicken Gill. Hey, Chicken Gill. Easy friendship. Good days.

FAMILY. No more road. The Barrett's have lived in their cluster of caravans on Hillside for the last 16 years. Six boys. Six girls. Plus Mamma and Dadda. No electricity save that which is granted by a cranky generator which the family coaxes into life each day.

The washing line always sags with the dripping handwashed clothes of a dozen sturdy off spring. The smell of smoke always lingers. The Barretts are always busy. The family makes and repairs trailers. Puts this together. Takes that apart.

Frank, the third eldest, loves the feel of the hard work. One "night he came down to Chick's place for training having filled 200 bags of logs that day. Split and stored to warm the family for the winter. Frank trained fresh as a daisy that night.

Warm people. When Chick calls up there is tea on the table before he has the seat pulled out to sit himself down. Often there'd be the leg of a rabbit and some spuds. Chick will say that it's little wonder that the Barrett's are all so robust.

"Everything we have goes on the table," they say.

They love the life they live. Mamma and Dadda grew up in tents and caravans when times were harder. They tried a house once but couldn't live in that choking confinement.

"The only bad thing I can think of about a caravan," says Frank, "is that settled people look down on you for living in one.

Dadda loved the boxing. Passed on the lore and the love. Eight years old and Frank was brought to Mervue to see his cousin Tom Mongan fight, saw Tom's arm raised in victory. Was addicted.

"Why Dadda? Why," Frank said, tugging Dadda's sleeve. "Why can't I box?"

Three years later he had his wish, matched up with another lad in a draughty hall in Ennis.

"I wasn't scared but I got hit. I'd never had gloves on. I was just throwing big swingers. I won, though. After that Chick taught me how to box properly." Frank did his time, saw the country through the window of a bus, fought in every ring, learned every time.

GOODFELLAS. Wednesday in Brent Park. London for three days. Resting up after four bouts in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Denmark. His Auntie Winnie collected him at Gatwick, gazed sadly at the black eye Frank got from the rocking horse head of an Austrian pug and then kissed him.

When they got back to the caravan every man, woman and child on the site stopped by to shake Frank's hand.

The gypsies, as the locals call them, are packed inconspicuously in here between Tesco's and a home improvement warehouse. A grey steady drizzle insinuates dampness everywhere.

Portakabins. Oil drums. Tyres. Rotting boards. Pieces of mangled metal scattered like weeds across grey gravel. A black mongrel puppy scampers under a caravan as a gaggle of short haired kids gather to catch another glimpse of their champion.

Their chatter is speculative.

"Are you boys from the radio."

"No the papers."

"The Sun?"

"No. The Irish Times."

"How come you don't see no travellers ever in the The Sun."

"Couldn't tell you. Maybe it's best."

"Frank is in the Olympics, mister."

"Are you going to watch him?"

"Aw. Don't know. Maybe."

"He'll be on the telly."

"Frank will be on the television? Here? Frank? On the television?"

Frank appears suddenly slipping from behind a beige caravan door in a dazzling white O'Neill's tee shirt and blue jeans. He takes control.

He is going to borrow a car, bring us to a gym in Harlesden for photos. Do the interview there, maybe here. Some of the boys will be coming down to get the photos too. Then he apologises.

"If it was home in Galway now, we'd be properly set up. I'd have everything organised."

At home boxing is the heartbeat. Frank and three brothers saved for half a year once and got Dadda to pay the balance for the body of an old trailer which they have converted to a gym. £300 for a dream. Chick gave them a springball and a bag and they painted the wall. In the evenings they take it in turns to go inside and train.

Boxing marks the rhythm of their days. They leave the site at seven, scattering to do their running work. Frank goes to a field nearby, runs hills and runs sprints for half an hour. That always leaves him begging for breath.

In the afternoon the boys spar. They have an imaginary ring marked off on the grass of the site.

"My body has turned to stone," says Jimmy Barrett ruefully. "That's from the way Frank likes to spar."

"You see," says Frank, "Jimmy comes at me with the jabs and the head shots. I always go to take a boxer down with bodyshots. I hit him in the body all the time."

There are no ropes. No backing off. John Barrett spars differently. He dances around and Frank chases.

It's a job for Chick to get the lads on the pads and the bags. When Frank came to Chick first he wouldn't skip, but now he dances like Sugar Ray Leonard.

"He'll always learn," says Chick.

In Harlesden the boys slip confidently up the stairs of a gym which specialises in something called Aerobics. Frank likes London. Nobody cares what you are or where you live. He hits the heavy bag for the camera while the others dawdle. The boys rub shoulders and raise their fists for a group shot. They line up before a long dance mirror and make shapes, lie a fighting can can line. They have neat jabs and tidy uppercuts and driving overhanders and they look sublimely happy.

LOCAL hero. Frank is a light welterweight in the ring but much more out of it. Nineteen years old and he has a lot to carry.

When he won the Irish senior championship last December the local priest Father Brady made him stand up at mass the next Sunday. Everybody clapped. "You'd feel embarrassed," says Frank, "but at sports awards you have to walk up through everyone else. That's worse."

More to come, though. When he was in Denmark fighting for a place in the Olympics the family followed the drama by watching the teletext pages. When Frank won through finally and the news came blinking onto the relevant page, he wasn't just their Frank anymore.

"Now there is much more for me to think about. Every time I talk I am talking for travellers. Even if I didn't want to be, I am. I like that. I suppose I'm going to be doing a lot of talking between now and the Olympics. For travellers. That's how people judge me".

He talks about traveller life. Cold nights lying in bed in the dark with the heat of the stove for comfort. The name calling. The business of being barred from pubs and being followed by security guards in shops.

There is a reception for him when he comes home to Galway next week in a big Galway hotel.

"I'm not sure if any traveller was ever in that hotel," he says. "Even if they'd be let in I'm not sure they'd try. Travellers are gone used to that."

He knows the edge of bigotry but he loves the life. Air. Freedom. An uncluttered head. The boundaries between small means and few wants. Can't imagine the drudgery of mortgages and offices.

Some days he just gets on a bike and heads away for a feckless day of fishing. The Huckleberry Finn of the Atlantic coast. Chasing fish in Oughterard or Spiddle or Clarinbridge or Kilcolgan. Just Frank and his thoughts from dawn to dusk with the sun beating off the trouty water.

No such days this summer. A pre Olympic tournament in Atlanta looms later this month. Then nine weeks of training camps and trips and the briary tangle of media interest.

Afterwards he is going to take a few months off. Get a little caravan and travel all alone. A few months on the road. Some fishing. See his girlfriend. Think it all through for himself. The recent past and the unfolding future.

Then he'll fight on because that's his life. When he finishes fighting he'll train fighters, he says.

Boxing has made his life in Galway easier, he thinks. Two local gardai and the local bank and the local radio station have started a fund for him to go the Olympics. A sponsor has a sweater ready for him. "Francis Barrett, Olympic Hope" says the legend.

Caravan to bandwagon. He appreciates the affection but can't forget where he is coming from. When he qualified for the Olympics the Mayor of Galway came to the site in Hillside to congratulate Mamma and Dadda. Frank was sorry he wasn't there to meet him. For 16 years the site has been looking for electricity. For 16 years that project has been on the long finger.

"Am I representing Ireland or am I representing travellers?" asks Frank. It is something he has thought about often. "I am proud to represent Ireland, but I know that I represent people who'd discriminate against me too. I fight sometimes and I wonder what I am doing it for. I represent Ireland, but I represent travellers more."

"If I come back from the Olympics with a medal and the Minister is at the airport I'll do a good speech on behalf of travellers. I'm looking forward to that speech now if I win a medal, really looking forward to that. Maybe we'd get some electricity out on the site. We'd buy a machine and the mother wouldn't have to be breaking her back every day."

Francis Barrett. Olympic hope. The Games have seldom entertained such a sweet dreamer. He says thanks very much. See you again. Turns and disappears into his caravan once more. Outside the drizzle is still falling.