BELFAST:"IT'S A fighting town," said John McNally, standing strong and proud 60 years on from his own success in the Olympics. He was waiting for the Belfast boxers Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlan to arrive at the Titanic Belfast visitors' centre yesterday evening with their bronze medals.
A silver medallist at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, John was explaining why while Ireland has a particularly strong Olympics boxing record – much of that accomplishment having been rooted in Belfast.
The city now has eight Olympic medal winners and yesterday four of them were present to greet the two latest Belfast Olympians.
As 25-year-old Barnes and 20-year-old Conlan arrived at the centre, among the scores of people loudly applauding them were McNally, Freddy Gilroy who won bronze in Melbourne in 1956, Jim McCourt, a bronze medallist in Tokyo in 1960, and Hugh Russell, who won bronze in Moscow in 1980. The other bronze medallist from Melbourne, John Caldwell, has died, while Barcelona 1992 silver medallist Wayne McCullough, who is based in the US, couldn’t be present.
There was no mistaking the pride the former boxers and everyone present felt in the achievement of Barnes and Conlan.
“They are great young fellows,” said John McNally. “I just love to see our Belfast fighters doing so well.”
Belfast City Council has organised a city-centre open-top bus ride between 1pm-2pm for them today while their friends, relatives and neighbours are also organising celebratory parties.
Close up, you can’t but be struck at how slight are the light-flyweight Barnes and the flyweight Conlan.
But nobody was offering to take them on – apart from little Cormac Barnes who, sitting on his father Conor’s shoulders, was punching his red boxing gloves together, as if shaping up for a few rounds.
“He wants a shot at you,” shouted Conor Barnes to his boxing nephew Paddy.
In their Ireland tracksuits and bearing their bronze medals, the boxers chatted to reporters, signed autographs and posed for pictures.
Asked might he turn professional, Barnes repeated what he has often said before, that if “somebody offered me half a million pounds I would take that no problem”. But nobody has, so it looks like he will be aiming for better things at the next Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in four years’ time.
Conlan already has his heart set on Brazil. Russell, now a photographer with the Irish News in Belfast, said there was no reason why Barnes couldn’t achieve even greater success in Rio. And as for Conlan, “I think he is one of the classiest boxers Belfast has ever produced.”
Conlan’s grandfather Joe Strong agreed. “If he can keep his feet on the ground he will be all right – and I think he knows what he is doing.”
