Being there on Saturday night was a sporting occasion that was very much in the moment and will come back to me in layers of memory for the rest of my life. Trying to capture it in words is like trying to bottle smoke, but sure, let’s try, for the record.
I have been writing about Katie for as long as I have been writing Sport for Business. She appeared in our very first Daily Digest back in December 2011.
At that stage London 2012 was still ahead of us. Women’s boxing was preparing to make its Olympic debut, and few could have imagined quite where the journey would ultimately lead.
On Saturday night it led to Croke Park.
We were sitting just behind the ringside seats, close enough to feel part of the action but with the added benefit of a bowl view across one of the great stadiums of world sport.
It turned out to be a perfect place from which to watch, and feel, the night unfold.
You could see every movement in the ring, but also appreciate the full scale of what was happening around it. When the fireworks exploded from the roof of Croke Park, the whole stadium became part of the show.
Walking towards Croke Park beforehand, a well-trodden path, albeit rarely used to get out onto the pitch, it already felt like a national gathering. There were families everywhere, young girls in Katie Taylor shirts, boxing supporters, GAA supporters and many who might never previously have considered buying a ticket for a professional fight.
That breadth of appeal has always been part of what makes Taylor different.
There have been Irish sports stars who have commanded enormous admiration. Very few have generated the almost universal love that surrounds her.
The undercard provided its own share of highs and lows.
There was a great result for Paddy Donovan, a performance that reminded us there will be Irish boxing stories to follow long after this particular night.
There was disappointment too for Emmet Brennan. His own story and the affection in which he is held in Irish boxing made that a difficult result.
Then came the extraordinary scenes in the penultimate fight, with Thomas Carty going through the ropes in the opening round and being unable to continue.
For a few moments there was confusion around the stadium as everyone tried to work out exactly what had happened.
It was an unfortunate and surreal conclusion to a fight that had been expected to provide one of the major moments of the undercard, and another reminder that live sport rarely follows the script it is prepared for.
Then came Katie.
When she made the walk towards the ring, you could feel the whole stadium change.
Everyone was standing. Phones were in the air. People were trying to record a moment which, in truth, was impossible to properly capture on a screen.
The noise, the scale and the emotion belonged to being there.
For all of her life in sport, Katie Taylor’s impact on boxing, on women’s sport, on audiences and on how Ireland sees its sporting heroes, has been truly game-changing.
I have been fortunate to be present for some wonderful Irish sporting occasions, many of them in the same special location, but this carried a different weight because we knew a remarkable sporting story was reaching its final pages.
Katie changed perceptions of women’s boxing before it was fashionable to talk about equality in sport.
She forced open doors that had previously been closed.
She became an Olympic champion, a professional world champion, and one of the defining figures in the international growth of women’s professional sport.
And she managed to do all of that while remaining unmistakably Katie Taylor.
For me, there was something special about sitting there, looking up and around Croke Park, watching fireworks explode above the stadium, and thinking back to those first stories we wrote nearly fifteen years ago.
Sport for Business has chronicled plenty of major sporting moments since 2011, but Katie’s story has run almost the full length of our own.
From London to the world titles, professional boxing, Madison Square Garden and the great nights that followed.
And finally home, to the Croke Park finale that many of us believed could never become real but which gloriously did on Saturday night.
The fight had less jeopardy than the Olympic bouts, less ferocity than the Serrano trilogy, but it was never going to be about one result. Afterwards, she spoke, awed by what she could see before her.
And then the final defining act. Heroes rarely get to exit the stage completely on their own terms, perhaps especially in boxing, but again, Katie was always cut from a cloth of her own making. The walk around the ring and the laying down of her gloves in the centre was the perfect farewell that needed no words.
They represented the training, the fights, the medals, the titles, the sacrifices and a journey that had taken her from Bray to the biggest stages in world sport.
Placed there in the middle of a Croke Park ring, they brought a remarkable career to a wonderfully simple close.
To friends in Lidl and in Croke Park, to Brian Peters and Eddie Hearn for never giving up on the dream, to all those who helped her along the way, thanks.
But especially, and for one last time, in the most glorious of settings.
Thank you, Katie.
Lidl Ireland, Croke Park Stadium, Boxing Ireland and RTÉ are full members of Sport for Business. AIB are partners of our Gaelic Games coverage.
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Image Credit: Lidl Ireland
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