As Kellie Harrington seemingly brought the curtain down on a glittering career in the middle of Roland Garros in Paris, she sang.
With the local fans long gone and security guards rattling through the French version of "are you right there now folks, please?" Harrington led the Irish Olympic staff, the media and the hundreds of Irish fans who weren't going before she was, through a moving rendition of Grace.
'Grace’ is a beautiful ballad by the Dubliners, the song of a sombre farewell between Grace Gifford and Joseph Plunkett who were married in the chapel at Kilmainham Gaol just hours before he was executed by a firing squad in 1916.
Harrington led us through a far more joyous goodbye in Paris but one no less deserving of commemoration in song, as she bowed out of amateur boxing at the absolute pinnacle of the sport.
She did leave the door just cracked open on the chance of a return, saying after the medal ceremony that she’s "98% sure she will retire" but regardless of when she goes, Harrington will leave an unmatched legacy.
Double Olympic champion.
No other Irish boxer has done what she’s done. No other Irish woman has done what she’s done. In beating China's Wenlu Yang to defend her Olympic lightweight title, Harrington has chiselled her name into the history books.
It’s been a long journey. Harrington’s road to Olympic glory started while she was still a child.
Corinthians boxing club coach Joey O’Brien tells of an "eight or nine-year knocking on my door and hounding me, and I mean ‘hounding’ me, to get her into the boxing club and let her train."
Boxing clubs were very much the preserve of men and boys back then and Harrington had to wait until she was 15 until she wore down the Corinthians coaches with her persistence. Once in, however, she never looked back.
Harrington’s first official fight came two years later and early in her career she was already facing the world’s best. Her third ever fight and first defeat came against Natasha Jonas, who now holds the WBC and WBO light-middleweight titles.
Multiple Irish titles followed as Harrington made her mark on the domestic scene and while she was doing so Katie Taylor was blazing a trail for women’s boxing, one that both helped and hindered Harrington.
As Harrington was lacing up the gloves for her first early amateur bouts, Taylor was winning European and World gold medals and became one of the main driving forces to bring women’s boxing to the Olympic games.
Harrington has made no secret of her admiration for Taylor, insisting that she was a role model and inspiration for her and the Bray fighter helped to open up many of the doors that Harrington would charge through years later.
However, Taylor carried so much weight within Irish boxing circles that it was difficult for other female boxers to come out of her shadow. Doubly so for Harrington whose natural weight division and the one she later excelled in, was the same as Taylor’s – lightweight.
That Taylor’s father Pete was such an influential coach within the Irish set-up at the time didn’t help Harrington’s chances and in her biography, the two-time Olympic champion is very open on how she feels that the IABA were too focused on Taylor, to the detriment of other Irish fighters.
She wrote: "I could have learnt so much training with Michael Conlan and Paddy Barnes and Kenny Egan, and Katie Taylor. But it just wasn’t happening, and that made it really hard.
"Katie didn’t spar with females; Pete didn’t want her sparring with them. I asked for it, but it never happened.
"The general attitude of the IABA towards women’s boxing really annoyed me. Women weren’t being looked after; just one woman - Katie - was. And the IABA were letting this happen.
"The women weren’t getting the opportunity to train with the best, and they weren’t being sent to the multi-nations training camps and tournaments that the men were being sent to."
Pete Taylor has hit back at those claims, denying any preferential treatment, but it is striking that despite the huge overlap in their times as amateur fighters, Harrington and Taylor never met in the ring.
Harrington instead fought at weight levels above her preferred 60kg and had some success, most notably claiming the silver medal at the 2016 World Championships, but it was Taylor’s move to the professional ranks after the 2016 Olympics that helped to kickstart Harrington’s success in the lightweight division.
A gold medal at the 2018 Worlds really helped to announce Harrington on the global stage and set expectations according for the Tokyo Olympics.
However, Harrington had to contend with injury issues after becoming world champion and arrived into the Olympic year with little action in the previous six months.
The Olympic qualifiers erased those injury concerns as Harrington landed the gold medal at the European event.
In Tokyo Harrington would progress, virtually unscathed, to the semi-finals where she faced with a top-class opponent in Thailand’s Sudaporn Seesondeeyet, but the Portland Row pugilist faced the challenge head on and ensured a gold medal match-up would follow.
"Hakuna Matata - it means no worries," was famously Harrington’s catch-phrase in Tokyo and it proved to be apt in the gold medal decider when she secured a convincing victory over Brazil’s Beatriz Ferreira.
Having reached the top of the mountain in Japan, Harrington was eager to get back to her day job and quickly settled back into life with her wife Mandy and her cleaning job at St Vincent's Psychiatric Hospital in Dublin, but always with one eye on more gold.
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She added to her gold medal haul at the 2022 European Championships and last year’s European Games but always had her eyes firmly fixed on another Olympic gold.
That came in a surprisingly relaxed and supremely confident victory over Yang cementing the Dublin fighter’s legacy as the first Irish female athlete ever to win gold at back-to-back Olympic games.
"It's the last (fight) I think," Harrington said afterward, hedging her bets ever so slightly. "I'm 98% sure it's the last one. Imagine retiring as a double Olympic champion,"
"There's not many people who know when to stop, and I think I want to be finished as that and I want go out and be happy with it, and be remembered for the last win that I had.
"I've nothing left to prove. I've done it all. This one was for myself because I've had to dig deep. When you climb a mountain, find a bigger mountain. This was the bigger mountain."
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