Katie Taylor: A Young Boxing Prodigy in Bray

The first time I saw Katie Taylor, she was a slip of a 10-year-old in Bray boxing club, already moving as if the ring belonged to her.

I’d been sent down from The Big Issue in the early 1990s, camera over my shoulder, to photograph “a young girl obsessed with boxing”. The magazine’s mission was simple and sharp – helping people affected by poverty and homelessness earn a living by selling it on the streets – and this assignment felt like another story of fight and survival, just in a different arena.

Bray gym was all concrete, sweat and echo. In the middle of it stood Pete Taylor, who greeted me with the easy confidence of a man who knew every inch of the place. At his side, his daughter: Katie. Ten years old. Gloves on. Eyes locked in.

She started off working with Pete, smacking his hand pads with a ferocity that didn’t match her size. Each punch cracked through the gym, her feet shuffling, resetting, driving forward again. There was nothing playful about it. She wasn’t pretending to be a boxer. She already was one.

Then she stepped in with a boy.

That was when everything changed. Her whole expression sharpened. The session turned from practice to pursuit. She went after him, cutting off his angles, forcing him back, always on the front foot. He retreated, circled, tried to keep away. She refused to let him breathe.

Punch after punch landed. Not wild swings, but deliberate shots, thrown with intent. She hunted him around the ring, relentless, as if the idea of backing off had never once crossed her mind.

Later, as the evening slipped away and the sun dropped towards the sea, we walked outside for photos. Bray was bathed in that soft, golden light photographers dream about. Katie stood there, gloves still on, framed by the fading day.

The camera caught what words struggled to pin down: that flinty stare, the set of the jaw, the absolute refusal to be anything other than serious about what she was doing. In those eyes, even then, you could see it – the steel that would carry her from this small Irish town to Olympic gold and world titles.

Back then she was just a kid in Bray, chasing a boy around a ring. But the way she chased him told you everything about where she was headed.