After almost three decades blazing a trail, champion fighter can hang up her gloves knowing she has inspired a generation of sporting greatness
An hour before Katie Taylor emerged into the cauldron of Croke Park, a girl in a bright green tracksuit shadowboxed her older brother while waiting at a food stall.
Watched by their father, the girl copied the same trademark moves her heroine used to become the undisputed world champion several times over.
Katie spoke all week about putting on the best performance of her 28-year-long career against her challenger, Flora Pili.
She didn’t. But it was never about that.
The Bray woman’s legacy was not going to be defined by the style in which she won this bout.
The 80,000-plus people who filled the stands of Ireland’s ultimate sporting theatre are her legacy.
Each side of Croke Park was brimming with young people, girls and boys, watching on, dreaming of emulating arguably the country’s greatest-ever sportsperson.
This is Katie Taylor’s story. She has blazed a trail – one she hopes many more will follow, too.
“To any little girl or boy out there today, I was no different to them at their age,” she told the Irish Independent during a post-match press conference.
“I didn’t have a lot of money, or go to any fancy school, or a fancy boxing gym.
“But I had a huge dream, I learnt to work hard and learnt to never give up. There are no secrets to success. It is a well-known path. You work hard and never give up when times get tough. Keep that dream in your heart – it is as simple as that, really.”
Growing up in the Oldcourt estate in Ballywaltrim, Bray, Katie seemed destined for sporting greatness. Croke Park was always her ambition, and this venue adored every second of her swansong.
Before the match, Taylor had doubted her ability to fill this arena.
In truth, she could have filled it several times over. It felt like the entire nation was inside supporting her, such was the noise in the build-up to her ring walk.
Croke Park’s patrons crackled with sound before a punch was even thrown, whipped into a frenzy by Aoife Scott and Róisín O serenading them with a soaring rendition of Grace.
Ireland wanted this moment to linger. And the stories this career has generated will linger on for generations to come, perhaps for ever.
Taylor began her journey to boxing superstardom aged just 10, following her brothers Lee and Peter to their father’s gym. She was coached by her dad, Peter, who was the Irish senior light heavyweight champion in 1986.
She excelled at the sport, but the sport didn’t want her. Girls weren’t welcome back then.
Taylor had to pretend to be a boy called Kay, hiding her long hair in a head guard so she could fight undetected.
From a young age, Taylor and her father led a crusade to smash through every obstacle in their path and pave the way for women’s participation in the sport.
She succeeded. In 2001, she outboxed Alanna Audley at Dublin’s National Stadium in the first official female boxing contest in Ireland.
But Taylor wasn’t satisfied. Her insatiable appetite for success meant she would fight, and win, to bring female boxing to the Olympics.
She won gold the first time it featured during London 2012 – becoming Ireland’s “golden girl”. It is a title that has firmly remained since.
There were moments of doubt during her career too.
References to the disappointment of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 were peppered throughout Saturday evening’s spectacle. Katie grimaced each time the city’s name came out of her mouth.
The painful loss soon transformed into a glittering career in the professional ranks, when she took the step-up that same year.
Boxing supremo Eddie Hearn signed Katie up. He paid her just £6,000 for her debut fight against Karina Szmalenberg at Wembley Arena.
The figure was just another glass ceiling the Bray Bomber would smash for her fellow female athletes. She will take great pleasure in destroying this particular barrier into smithereens.
Conservative estimates last week put Taylor’s wealth at around $20m (€17m), marking her out as one of the best-paid Irish sports stars of all time. Only the likes of golfers Rory McIlroy and Pádraig Harrington and disgraced MMA fighter Conor McGregor will have earned more during their own careers.
But money was never Katie’s true objective. She worked hard to bring her sport to the world’s attention, clocking up impressive wins and showing female boxing belonged at the top.
Her own childhood boxing idol lauded her achievements.
Deirdre Gogarty, the first Irish woman to win a boxing world title, inspired Taylor as a child.
In the build-up to the fight, Gogarty stood outside Croke Park, taking in the crowds as they swelled towards the Hogan Stand. She famously fought on the undercard of a Mike Tyson fight in 1996.
Gogarty told the Irish Independent it was going to be a night full of emotions – both joy and mourning – as the curtain fell on Katie’s incredible boxing career.
“It is the end of an era,” she said.
“It is just amazing to see the transformation from when I started to today. It is just so healing for me. For everything women of my time went through to see where it is now. It is incredible.
“She is almost like a symbol of hope for everybody that when you put your mind to something, work hard and are always completely dedicated, then look what can happen.”
The build-up inside the stadium was like a disco. The €8 price tag for a pint of beer did not put off any of the revellers, who soaked up everything the night had to offer.
The ring walk was a nod to Katie’s Christian faith, which has played a huge part in her story.
“It sustained me during the heartbreak of the Rio Olympics and after the Chantelle Cameron loss,” she said after the fight. “From a young age, I fell in love with the word of God.”
Katie looked nervous at times in the ring, naturally. But she strolled through the fight, barring a seventh-round flurry from her French opponent.
Croke Park shook with adulation when the final bell went, and the decibels grew louder as Taylor’s arm was lifted into Dublin’s night-time sky. There was to be no shock.
Any pre-fight nerves washed away into satisfying relief. Katie’s mother, Bridget, best captured that sense of achievement by running into the ring and embracing her daughter.
“There is nothing quite like an Irish mammy,” Taylor said following the fight.
After being announced the winner, she took the microphone from her interviewer in the ring and surveyed the crowd, open-mouthed.
“Let me just look around,” she asked, spinning slowly around, soaking up the moment. The crowd roared her name back at her.
Taking the microphone wasn’t planned, Taylor insisted afterwards. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
She joked in the press conference that she doesn’t know what she wants to do now, but at least she will be able to eat whatever she wants, and enjoy the fruits of her labour.
It seems unlikely she will fully walk away from the sport of boxing just yet.
Countless more little girls across Ireland will be shadowboxing in their living rooms this week, inspired by almost three decades of her greatness in the ring.
Many have mused about whether Taylor is the ultimate Irish sportsperson. On the evidence of Saturday evening in Croke Park, Taylor is once again the undisputed champion.