(BEFORE THEY WERE SUPERSTARS)
(KATIE TAYLOR)
(AGE - 21 DATE - JANUARY 2008)
(SPORT - BOXING LOCATION - BRAY, IRELAND)
I can box and I can fight.
No, I don't always rely on one thing.
I can mix it up and box or fight.
I can deal with kind of everything in the ring.
It's unbelievable what she's done,
and she's still the same person as when she started
when she was 10. It's not changed her.
Mentally, she's great and she has great hand speed
and she's never fazed by anybody.
She can punch all right. She can punch hard.
I definitely haven't reached my best yet. I'm only 21.
So there's still a lot to come from me, I think.
I just love the sport, everything about it.
Bray. County Wicklow. Ireland.
This seaside town
on the eastern coast of the Emerald Isle
is situated 20km south of Dublin
and is home to around 30,000 people.
Katie was born and raised here.
Yeah, I was just into all sorts of sports, really.
I was a very sporty child.
I was into football, boxing,
athletics, Gaelic football, camogie - everything, really.
So everyday was kind of a different sport for me.
So it was a great childhood, I loved it.
I've loved sports
and that's all I was into when I was a child.
At this stage of her career, Katie had already experienced
a considerable amount of success in the boxing ring.
She was the reigning World and European Lightweight champion.
She was also one of her country's leading
women's soccer players,
and a key member of the Irish national team.
Boxing's definitely my number one sport at the moment.
Football was my first love.
I started football before I even set foot inside a ring,
but the boxing's kind of taken over now,
the last five or six years, and I've kind of concentrated more
on my boxing and the tournaments coming up.
Katie was coached by her dad at his gym in Bray.
Peter is a former fighter himself,
and was the 1986 Irish Light-Heavyweight
amateur champion.
His daughter's first taste of the sport
came as a ten-year-old.
Yeah, I was training for the All-Irelands at the time
and we had no baby-sitter so I fetched Katie up to the club
and when I looked around, she was sparring with all the boys.
So it was an accident, really.
It was just so natural for me, when I first started off,
and I thought it was something that I was very good at.
And the first time I went up to boxing club,
I was in sparring the first night
and I just love the training that it involves
and it's so competitive as well, I think.
So I never looked back ever since.
I loved it from the first day that I went to the club
and I never missed a day after that.
At the age of 15, Katie made Irish boxing history
by fighting in the first officially sanctioned
women's bout held in Ireland.
She won comfortably and two years later,
she took part in her first tournament.
She was 17, we got to the final and she boxed the current
world champion at the time, who was 34.
I wasn't sure about taking the fight,
but Katie jumped in and she beat her.
In 2006, Katie won her first world title
and successfully defended it in 2008.
Back then, Katie knew that she would be unable
to add Olympic gold to her collection,
as the IOC had decided against including women's boxing
at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
I was devastated when I heard
that it wasn't in the Olympics in 2008 in Beijing.
A lot of people were saying that they were 99% sure
that it was going to be in Beijing
and they were building our hopes up
and every woman boxer out there was devastated
when we heard that it wasn't going to be in.
The standard of women's boxing out there is amazing,
and we should be given the right to represent
our countries and box on the biggest stage of all.
And we were all devastated when it happened.
But I think our time is going to come in 2012.
Hopefully, you know,
women's boxing will definitely be put in.
Many fathers would have tried to keep their daughter
out of the boxing ring, but not Peter Taylor.
Yet, despite having moulded Katie
into such a dominant fighter,
he admitted to a few butterflies in the stomach
before her fights.
I'm a nervous wreck, to tell you the truth,
I'm a nervous wreck. But then the coach has to kick in
and you've got to look at everything
and analyse things as it goes along.
You can't let your emotions take over,
but I do get exhausted after each contest
and I'm much more nervous than Katie, you know.
We have a great relationship together.
We get on so well in the gym and at home, we get on so well.
We can talk about boxing really all the time.
The both of us just love boxing and he's a great coach.
It's great having him in the corner with me.
I couldn't have achieved what I have achieved
without him in my corner, I don't think.
He's one of the best coaches in the world I think.
Katie, who is the youngest of five children
born to Peter and his wife Bridget,
hadn't just experienced success in the ring.
An outstanding soccer player, she was voted
the Wicklow Schoolboy Player of the Year,
despite being a girl, and she had gone on to win over 40 caps
for Ireland's under-17, under-19 and senior teams.
She only plays a small amount of football now
and Noel King, the manager of the Irish football team,
is very understanding.
He fetches her in when she's available
and he knows that she'll only be available
for one or two matches a year, but he always fetches her in
and he looks after her,
so hopefully she performs well for him.
But there's no balancing act any more,
she's primarily boxing, you know.
I think the football is brilliant for me as well.
It's a great change from the boxing.
In between tournaments, when I have a big break,
I always go back to the football
and play a bit of football as well,
so it's a great change for me
and it's great to use different muscles as well.
It's a lot more relaxing from the boxing as well.
With the boxing, I'm always under a lot of pressure
and in these competitions, but with the football,
it's nice and relaxing and I can just enjoy
being around the girls and playing football as well.
Katie's outstanding talent as a fighter
had led to her receiving many offers to turn professional,
but that was something that didn't interest her.
I'm definitely going to stay amateur
for the next few years, I think.
I'm very confident that women's boxing will be in the Olympics
in 2012, and I'm getting well looked after
by the Irish Sports Council as well, and they've supported me
for the last few years and I couldn't really have asked
for anything more from them.
So I think I'm definitely going to stay amateur
and try to defend my World Championship
and European Championship as well,
that's a new challenge for me.
And if I get the chance to go to the Olympics in 2012,
I'm going to aim for a gold medal.
It's going to be brilliant.
Women's boxing made its debut at the 2012 London Olympics.
Katie went on to achieve her dream.
She won gold in the Lightweight division
in what was one of the most widely predicted
gold medals of the entire Games.
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