Trailblazer'sjourney is just beginning
BOXING: IOC and Seb Coe have a prized athlete who stands for so much more than just boxing
KATIE TAYLOR’s fourth successive world title won’t make as much noise as a lost Euro 2012 football match or the first of the summer hurling, but her unbroken chain of podium finishes are becoming less easy to define in a world of sporting achievements or, indeed, contain.
Taylor’s unflinching ambition and her pioneering run from the first European belt in 2005 up to Saturday morning has made her the boxer on which the suave Seb Coe and the Olympic Games organising committee are pinning their London hopes.
The sport’s governing body and Olympic organisers understand the inaugural women’s competition needs an athlete that can send a message to the doubters, the misogynists and the old school cynics, who also once argued women could not run further than four laps of the track.
Even Sonia O’Sullivan in her early career was told to run 3000m, not 5,000m. She didn’t keel over when she won the 5,000m World Championships in Gothenburg.
Taylor, the Sky Sports ambassador, one of the few athletes the organisers chose to promote the games, and a fighter who has never been beaten in a serious competition in seven years, is expected to provide just that.
Her position in the sport is not just as a potential gold medallist but also the most attractive image they can find for women’s boxing and a benchmark by which all other purveyors of pain should measure themselves.
For the London Games this summer, she has not just been hired to promote and advertise the Olympic Games, but like sprinter Usain Bolt, Taylor herself is the advert.
When she qualified for the games last Wednesday and the tears flowed after Romanian Mihaela Lacatus defaulted in the quarter-final due to a neck injury, the 25-year-old called for any available wildcards to be given to the strongest contenders in the sport rather than to worthy no-hope candidates.
The global spread of boxing and the anomalous Olympic ideal of being simultaneously inclusive and exclusive is one thing, but favourable optics is another issue high in Taylor’s mind.
The five times European champion and four times world champion understands that in as much as she is a dedicated Christian in her private life, some evangelical zeal might be required when the world is watching in August.
Many will tune in to nit-pick and gripe and that explains Taylor’s lack of hesitation in calling for the most difficult opponents to be gathered in the Excel Arena – Cheng Dong (China), Gulsum Tatar (Turkey) and America’s Queen Underwood, who have not qualified.
