The atmosphere was electric in Taylor's hometown yesterday as they cheered on one of their own to Olympic glory, writes RONAN McGREEVYin Bray
ONCE MORE unto the breach, dear friends: the people of Bray will ready themselves today for Olympic glory.
Katie Taylor’s third medal fight in four days is like the time-honoured adage about London buses. You wait all summer for one fight and then three come along at once.
A sense of expectation hung around Main Street in Bray like the coastal fog enveloping the town yesterday afternoon for the penultimate fight of Taylor’s Olympic campaign.
Semi-finals tend not to be memorable unless you lose, and then you don’t want to remember them at all. In the temporary media centre in the Town Hall, flyers had already been printed directing media to today’s final – before a punch was thrown in the semi-final.
Some 4,000 people crowded into an area opposite the Town Hall for Taylor’s fight against Mavzuna Chorieva of Tajikistan.
“You’d be better off watching it at home,” said one disgruntled Taylor supporter looking at the tightly packed multitudes which spilled over on to the Killarney Road where another big screen was erected.
The figures were slightly down on her quarter-final, but that was a bank holiday Monday and people were probably saving themselves for the final.
Yesterday, they came from far and near to see her fight, some local office workers taking a late lunch break. Others, like Mick Burke (73), came on the train from Drogheda yesterday morning. “I couldn’t get to London,” he said, “I remember when Ronnie Delany won the gold. This is greater than that because we didn’t have the expectation in those days.” There was even a guy from the New York Times to see the girl from Bray.
At the front of the crowd there were old people in wheelchairs, toddlers in buggies, young and old in leprechaun hats. A black child sat on her father’s shoulder beside a child of Asian origin, both waving tricolours. They hung a “fighting Irish” tricolour from the balcony of a local solicitor’s office.
The crowd cheered after RTÉ presenter Michael Lyster introduced a rare cautionary note into proceedings asking the panel if there was any chance, even the slightest, that Taylor could lose. The answer from the experts was an emphatic no.
Any lingering doubts were dispelled from the bell, when Taylor hit her opponent with a flurry of punches and you could hear the Olés from the ExCel Arena coming over the public address system.
By the end of the first round, the mayor of Bray, Cllr Mike Glynn, who was watching from a side road, was on his mobile phone making arrangements for today’s Olympic final.
There is a deep bond of affection between the heroine and her hometown. “The best town in Ireland,” is how her father Peter described Bray after yesterday’s fight. “She’s the best ambassador we’ve ever had in Ireland,” said local woman Anne Crinion. “She’s perfect: no shenanigans, no anything about her and every time she wins she thanks God. It is a pity there’s not more like her”.
The screen will be moved to the car park of the Shoreline Leisure Health and Fitness club in Ballywaltrim, Taylor’s home patch, for this evening’s final which is at 4.45pm. The advice is to come early.