If you could bottle what Kellie Harrington has brought to the lives of those around her, you would wake up every day with a smile on your face.
From fluffy pigeons and Hakuna Matata in those interviews on her way to Olympic glory in Tokyo to the smaller scale human interactions with ordinary folk for who she makes their world shine brighter without any ask in return.
We first came in contact with Kellie back in 2016 when helping curate a panel ahead of the Ladies Football All Ireland for broadcast on TG4’s Facebook page. The panel that night was Valerie Mulcahy and Lindsey Peat who had won their All Ireland’s and two young rising stars that we had identified as potential role models. Rachael Blackmore and Kellie Harrington were those two and they have since proven to be among the best of their or any other generation.
Since then we have kept in touch, have seen the work she does in Dublin’s North Inner City, have asked her to partake in online fundraisers, with her dog and biscuits, and never left her company without feeling the world was a better place.
The first of our suggested Christmas gifts for those of yours that love sport is her Biography, written with Roddy Doyle and winner of the Sports Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards.
It’s not always an easy read. She dives deep into a childhood that was far from Gold Medals with pills and drink in her personal world before hitting secondary school.
She does not pull any punches when it comes to her feelings on how Irish boxing focused too much on Katie Taylor and delayed the advances we are seeing now in the amateur ranks.
There is a deep chapter about her feelings after winning Gold at the Olympics, not what you would have imagined, and also of her life with Mandy Loughlin, working in St Vincent’s Psychiatric Hospital through Covid and more.
It’s a belter and as sports biographies go, one of the best you will find.
