Kellie Harrington is one of Ireland's greatest-ever sportspeople and is one of just three female boxers worldwide who have claimed two Olympic Gold medals.
While today Harrington is synonymous with her Paris 2024 Gold Medal win, eighteen months ago the Dublin Boxer came very close to giving away her Olympic dream.
Ever since Harrington stormed to her first Olympic lightweight title at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, she has stolen the hearts and minds of her country and city with her humble honesty.
While the post-COVID years raised some difficulties for the Dubliner, her sensational run to Olympic Gold at Paris 2024 and the heartwarming celebrations that followed have raised Harrington's stardom to all-new heights.
6 August 2024; Kellie Harrington of Team Ireland, right, and Wenlu Yang of Team People's Republic of China during their women's 60kg final bout at Court Philippe-Chatrier in Roland Garros Stadium during the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
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Kellie Harrington came scarily close to giving away Olympic place
Despite the success she enjoyed, speaking on Ryan Tubridy's The Bookshelf podcast, the two-time Olympic gold medalist revealed that she came very close to giving away her spot at last summer's Olympics.
The pair were delving into Harrington's life when Harrington explained how a particularly trying Christmas and start to 2024 had her wanting to pack in her Olympic dreams.
I've a family, I've a wife, I've dogs, I've a mortgage, you have a personal life and stuff happened in the last three years and it was hard. Particularly from last December (2023) on. We lost Mandy's father in December and then we lost the dog in January.
At that stage I though if I could give this spot up to another Irish girl she can have it. I wouldn't give it back to the IOC and give another country the spot but I would give it to another Irish person if that could happen.
And I asked, and they told me it couldn't happen, but I think they may have just said that because they really wanted me to go like and I'm glad that they did say it, but that's where I was at like.
I was thinking of giving it up, I was thinking there's so much more to life than boxing, I need to live life because at that stage everything was happening.
While fortunately for Ireland, Harrington got on the plane to Paris, her honesty gives a fascinating insight into the life of an elite yet amateur sportsperson.
Harrington would of course go on to write her name into Irish sporting history just six months after nearly dropping out of the Olympics, winning her second Olympic Gold Medal against China's Weng Yang Wenlu.
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