BOXING:World champion in India last November, adding that title to successive European golds, no wonder Katie Taylor is confident ahead of the European championships in Denmark. Seán Kenny reports
The champ saves it all up for the ring. There is no guff, no hubris. No entourage. No graphic threats to forthcoming opponents. Nothing remotely resembling a threat at all. No preening. No PR machine. No insults.
No insults at all. You ask about the champ's big rival, the Turkish fighter Gulsum Tatar. You hope for something caustic. Piquant at least. The champ won't bite.
"A really good boxer, very clever. Always my toughest fight."
Is Gulsum not slow? A weak puncher? Anything?
"And a southpaw too, so it's always that extra bit harder."
Certainly, the champ is confident. She is Katie Taylor, the best amateur lightweight female boxer in the world. She has the proof embossed on gold. She mined that precious metal from deep wells of self-belief.
She became world champion in India last November, adding that title to successive European golds. She will fight for a third European win over the next week (October 14th-21st) in Vejle in Denmark.
"I feel very confident. I've been sparring well. I can't wait to get in the ring and fight. I've a lot of experience at this level now. There's a bit of pressure on me as champion, but I defended my title last year in the Europeans. I know I can deal with that."
As ever, her father Pete will be in Katie's corner. Pete provides the context for his daughter's boxing life. His own career reached its zenith in 1986, when he was Irish lightheavyweight champion. It was the year Katie was born, and so the intertwining of two boxing lives began.
There were small, shadowy traces of her father's life in the ring around the house during her early childhood in Bray. She remembers seeing him train at home, watching a video of one of his fights. Boxing came to bond them. Hollywood could sentimentalise it: My Father the Pugilist.
One day when she was 10, she went to St Fergal's gym in Bray, where Pete was coach. Without preamble, she just started to box.
"I always remember my first day there. I was sparring even on my first day, with no gumshield in. It was just really natural for me. I always knew how to box, even from looking at my father training. I knew how to throw a punch even starting off."
Pete recalls the early emergence of his daughter's talent with equability. It was remarkably unremarkable.
"To tell you the truth, I never took much notice because she was a tomboy anyway. I never really thought too much about it. And then we had club shows and she was boxing boys. Up to the age of 15 she was boxing boys because there were no girls boxing.
"She was in against the Irish schoolboy champion at the age of 12 and she won fairly easy. I thought, 'she could have been Irish schoolboy champion'."
Pete grew up in Leeds. He speaks in bluff Yorkshire tones, unleavened by 30 years living in Ireland. The voice makes it sound even more remarkably unremarkable: his daughter was better than the best schoolboy in the country.
Word spread about Pete Taylor's little girl, and the boy boxers of North Wicklow faced a dilemma before stepping in the ring with Katie. Win and, well, it was only a girl. Lose, and they faced the mocking hilarity of their peers.
They never won.
By the time she was 15, she'd been pummelling male egos in Bray for five years. Pete and Katie decided it was time to lay off the lads. It was the chivalrous thing to do.
She started to fight female boxers and the precocious potential she had shown sparring boys was realised in competition. Pete was enjoying more success in his daughter's corner than he had during his own career.
"She's much better than I was. Technically, she can do everything. I was a one-dimensional fighter; I just went forward. I try to teach all my boxers in Bray not to do that now."
Katie jabs mischievously at the fatherly praise, laughing: "Ah, he had no skill really!" The edges can't have been all that rough, as that 1986 national title attests. Nonetheless, Pete found a niche in the corner. The roles of father and coach mingle advantage with disadvantage.
"Being her father, mentally, I know her well. I know the right things to say to her because I know her psychology. But sometimes it's her has to say things to me because I get more uptight than Katie coming up to fights."
Daughter echoes father: Pete knows her better than anyone. Nerves seize him every time she fights. "He's an amazing coach. I don't think I would have won any of these titles without my father in my corner."
In early November, she will fight a top Canadian boxer, Katie Dunn, in an exhibition bout during the men's World Championships in Chicago. She travels at the invitation of the tournament's organisers. Besuited gentlemen from the International Olympic Committee will be in town, with an eye on Beijing. And further down the road, London 2012.
Women's boxing was turned away at the door to Beijing by the IOC. Its omission is an anomaly that perplexes and frustrates female boxers, even coming from a body as resistant to change as the IOC. The rejection hit Taylor with all the dull, heavy force of glove on face.
"I was very disappointed it wasn't included for Beijing. A lot of girls were saying it'd definitely be in for 2008. Then I heard it wasn't. I would have been going for a gold medal in Beijing."
This last comment has the hard ring of trampled hope. Not just hope, but probability. On current form, she would have been favourite to take gold in China. The dream must be put into storage for five years. That is, if women's boxing makes it to London. Pete feels it will.
"I'm 99 per cent sure it'll be included for 2012. They can't really deny the women. It's the only sport really where the ladies aren't represented. And the standard of women's boxing is huge now.
"If people saw the standard of women's boxing, they'd be shocked. Katie herself spars with all the boys that are going away to the World Championships in Chicago. And she holds her own and can beat most of them."
So taking gold in 2012 is the big long-term goal. She will be 26 then and potentially at her peak. If the recent trajectory of her career continues, it is a possibility.
But there are ifs. Into that lingering sliver of doubt about her sport's future Olympic status snakes the lure of professionalism. She has had several offers to turn pro. Becoming professional, of course, means relinquishing the possibility of the Olympics. It is a stark, simple choice between a potential livelihood and a Corinthian dream.
Most recently, at a pre-European Championships training camp in Norway, she received an offer from a German promoter. Katie and Pete discussed it. They said no. Pete elaborates.
"It could be a livelihood for you, and you're getting all these big offers." There is the hint of a pause.
"At the end of the day, you can make as much money as you want, but if it's your dream to be in the Olympics, money can't buy that." For the foreseeable future, she's going to stay amateur.
"To be fair to all the female boxers, they have to let us know pretty shortly what the decision is."
For now, she has a European title to defend. As champion, she will be well studied by her opponents. She carries the burden of expectation.
She seems unfazed by this. She will sit quietly in her dressingroom and methodically focus on her fight. Then she will unleash hell's fury. Especially if she should encounter her old friend, Gulsum Tatar.
And when it's all over in Denmark and she's boxed for the suits under the bright lights in Chicago, she'll be back home, sparring with the lads in Bray or the National Stadium. And one image of possibility will stick fast in her mind: ascending to the middle step of an Olympic podium in 2012, if they will give her the chance.
In the words of the old song, she is keeping her eyes on the prize.
Katie Taylor was born in 1986, growing up in Bray, Co Wicklow.
In 2001, aged 15, she fought in the first ever officially sanctioned female boxing event in Ireland.
In May 2005, she became the first Irish woman to win gold at the Women's Amateur European Championships, in the 60 kg (lightweight) division. She successfully defended this title in Poland in September, 2006. In November of that year, she became world champion in India.
She is also a member of the Irish women's football panel, playing as a striker. Studying Leisure Management and Fitness, she is a student at Sallynoggin College of Further Education.
Pete Taylor, Katie's father and coach, grew up in Leeds, moving to Ireland with his parents as a 16-year-old. He was Irish lightheavyweight champion in 1986. He is head coach at Bray Boxing Club.
