Lily de la Cour: the kickboxer with the world at her feet

Lily de la Cour is a world kickboxing champion of French lineage, but when she speaks, she’s Bantry to the bone.

In truth, de la Cour’s connection with her French ancestry was lost long ago. And as for her fluency in the language of her ancestors, “it’s no better than anyone else’s”. A cluster of the Huguenot de la Cour clans fled from France to settle in Cork “hundreds of years ago” by de la Cour’s calculations, and as things sadly go with emigration, their presence in Ireland slowly depleted as the years went by. Today, de la Cour, along with her parents and younger brother Liam, are the last remaining family of that name in Ireland.

But now it’s Lily’s turn to carve out her own chapter in the de la Cour legacy. And through the medium of kickboxing, she’s doing just that.

At the age of seven, and with a small bit of Gaelic football training in the legs, she attended a kickboxing summer camp in Bantry, where she made the decision to switch sports. Her father Willie dabbled in karate for a spell in his youth, which is perhaps where her preference for kickboxing is rooted. And her younger brother Liam is a seasoned kickboxer with the national junior championships on his radar, so there must be some martial arts persuasion in the gene pool.

But whatever it was that inspired her, de la Cour says she took to it “like a duck to water’’.

Not only was kickboxing a better fit for her, it has delivered an abundance of success for de la Cour, both at juvenile and senior level. She has 11 junior all-Ireland titles, and three senior All-Ireland titles already stocked in the cabinet, along with finishing her days in the junior grade as world number one. And last December, at the age of just 21, she reached the pinnacle of her career by landing the senior world championships crown in the 50kg division, which also entitled her to a number one ranking.

This was her second appearance at the world championships, after a disappointing first attempt in 2013. The UCC student recalls how the expectation of success at underage level condemned her to a mentality that just was not going to fly against senior fighters.

“I went from winning so much at junior level,’’ she says, “and maybe then I expected to do well at senior level just because I did so well at junior. And then I got a good kick in the face and realised how much of a jump it was.”

“I never go into any competition and just presume I’ll win. I think it was a mixture of maybe overconfidence and I was so used to peaking around September every year in the junior, so by the time December came along I was kind of blown out. I always knew it was going to be an awful challenge, but definitely you have to pare yourself back and realise ‘I’m only a little fish in a massive pond’.”

Ian Kingston, de la Cour's kickboxing coach for the past 15 years, says her mindset is her greatest attribute. After she took a break from international competition in 2014, Kingston watched de la Cour return to training with a sharper bite the following year.

Natural ability

“She had tons of natural ability when she first started and she’s got a great attitude to training. It was a big jump up to senior, and looking back, she found the training hard that year. She was studying in college and was very busy with that.

“She came back the next year and her preparation was much better. She was better able to cope with the stress of college and she was more mature.’’

When de la Cour describes how she executed her comeback in 2015, it seems that her ability to understand the need for a change of attitude was her salvation.

“I trained hard for two years, but I also had a completely different mentality going into it and I just took it one fight at a time. I wanted to place and that’s ok for any competitor, but I just wanted to perform my best and get through as many fights as I could for experience. I think that kept me level headed and it all seemed to work out in the end.’’

Kickboxing for de la Cour is a six-day-a-week graft where cardio work, strength and conditioning drills and tactical exercises comprise the bulk of her training, which can stretch for over an hour and a half. She wears protective headgear and although the prescribed trousers for kickboxers have a suffocating look about them, de la Cour says they’re made from such a light material “that you hardly realise you’re wearing them”.

But just like many other minority sports, deprivation is an ongoing plight in kickboxing. The usual grievances relating to a lack of facilities and equipment are the scourge of every kickboxer.

And while financial support from sporting bodies is an area that de la Cour would like to see improvements in, she has drawn strength from the success that has been generated within her own club, despite being bereft of the essentials. That sense of resourcefulness has prompted her to question if athletes really need fancy facilities in order to thrive?

“Every single person involved in kickboxing will say, we’ve paid for all our trips abroad, we’ve spent thousands on getting to competitions. We don’t train in the best of facilities at the best of times. You get so used to it and you just let it go over your head.

“But things are starting to look up for us. We don’t have the nicest gym or the best equipment, but we’ve one of the most successful clubs, not only in Ireland but in Europe, so it’s hard to know, do we even need it?’’ she asks.

One of the redeeming elements of kickboxing, according to de la Cour, is that there is equality between the sexes. Both male and female kickboxers suffer in equal measure when it comes to access to top quality equipment which gives de la Cour some comfort. “We’re pretty even when it comes to that,’’ she says.

But that’s not to say that the sport is stagnant. In fact, a significant change regarding the status of the sport is not too far away.

In August, a fleet of athletes donning tricolour gear will board a plane and head for Rio. With kickboxing still waiting to be verified as an Olympic sport, de la Cour’s calendar for 2016 has a different look to it. She has a World Cup in Italy to prepare for in June and the European Kickboxing Championships are taking place in Greece this year. But the Bantry woman’s dream of representing Ireland in the Olympics is close to becoming a real ambition.

Olympics

“Any athlete’s dream is to compete in the Olympics. I think because it’s never been an option for me, the world championships has always been what I’ve wanted to win, but we’re nearly into the Olympics. We’re registered with the Olympic Council. I don’t know a lot about the formalities, but we’re getting there.”

And while she waits for that development to come through, de la Cour’s coach believes that the world champion can still achieve, despite having obtained the highest accolade in the sport.

“I’m delighted that she still has an appetite to succeed. My goal is to improve her and I think I can, and she’s always looking to improve things herself.’’

Cork may not have been a kickboxing stronghold when the de la Cours first landed in Ireland all those years ago, but things have evolved since then and de la Cour’s continued success is driving the growth of the sport.

All in all, the pond is getting smaller.