IF the ebullience of youth was required to drag Ireland back from the brink of disaster, the clinical composure of the team’s most experienced head helped steady the ship.
Defeats for Dean Clancy, Aidan Walsh and Grainne Walsh sent out shockwaves after the early exchanges, before the sheer will of 21-year-old Jack Marley saved the day by getting Ireland up and running on Sunday night.
Kellie Harrington, gold medallist in Tokyo three years ago, was the safe pair of hands on Monday afternoon. Or, at least, that was the expectation. But, coming in off the back of a deserved European Championship defeat to Serbia’s Natalia Shadrina in April, suddenly question marks emerged.
That brought to a shuddering halt a run of 32 straight wins. Now 34, and having sought refuge from the media glare during recent times, what Kellie Harrington would we see in Paris?
Any doubts, though, were answered in swift, and stylish, fashion.
Shaking out her arms and shoulders before the first ball sounded, that familiar razor focus took hold as a series of left jabs stung the face of Alessia Mesiano, the tall Italian too timid until the dying seconds of the first as Harrington seized control.
Their only previous meeting came, bizarrely, in a behind-closed-doors international in Jordanstown months before the Tokyo Olympics, with Harrington – again coming off the back of a recent loss – coming out the right side of what she recalled as a tougher fight.
“I knew I’d fought her in Belfast,” she said, “it was a very pressured fight and a very pressured situation.
“The ring must have been smaller, I don’t know.”
After that confident start easily won the first, the Dubliner enjoyed herself.
Arms low, switching back and forth between southpaw and orthodox, target practice was proving wilding frustrating for Mesiano as Harrington lapped up the occasion to claim a unanimous points win.
However, the serious business really starts now, as she is unlikely to get it anywhere near as easy against Colombia’s Angie Valdas Pana on Thursday.
A former World and Pan American Games finalist, Pana is expected to come through that test. Harrington, though, wasn’t entertaining talk about her next outing – and insisted there had been no hangover from that shock loss to Shadrina.
“None, none,” she said, “you have to fall to get back up. If you didn’t get back up you may as well stay down.
“It’s only a loss if you don’t learn from it and hopefully I learned from it… it’s always good to get a win. I’m just happy to be here and get out and compete.
“I felt alright in there, I was trying to implement the tactics that were being given to me by the corner. We had a good plan going in and the plan worked so, yeah, it felt good to get going.”
Irish tricolours were dotted across the North Paris Arena, with family members and Harrington’s wife, Mandy, in the crowd – not that the Dubliner took too much notice. “I think I heard Mandy shouting ‘come on Kellie’, I’m nearly sure it was her,” she smiled.
“I didn’t look up into the crowd until afterwards, they’re distractions I don’t need when I walk into the ring but it great to have people out there cheering me and great to see the Irish flag floating around the stadium there, it’s absolutely class.
“It’s great to see the Irish flag being flown around the stadium there, it’s class, absolutely top class. I know Mandy and my brother [Joe] are out there somewhere so it’s great to know that they got to come over and experience the Olympics as well as me.”
Before she left, a final word was reserved for team-mates, perhaps in light of what had been a difficult start to these Games.
“I just want to also say, before we head off, congratulations and best of luck to the rest of our team.
“Our team has put in so much work to get out here, every single one of them bit down and dug deep, and they will continue to do that in the tournament.
“We have a great team coming through and they’ll keep going.”
RUNNING ORDER
Tuesday, July 30
54kg last 16: J Lehane v Y Chang (China) – 10.36am
Wednesday, July 31
57kg last 32: J Gallagher v C Paalam (Phillipines) – 1.30pm
60kg quarter-final: K Harrington v A Valdes Pana (Colombia) – 4.54pm
75kg last 16: A O’Rourke v E Wojcik (Poland) – 7.52pm
Thursday, August 1
51kg last 16: D Moorehouse v W Lkhadiri (France) – 6pm
92kg: J Marley v D Boltaev (Tajikistan) – 9.08pm
Friday, August 2
57kg last 16: M Walsh v SK Staneva (Bulgaria) – 1.46pm
